


Life Unwoven

by rougeandtonic



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Body Swap, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Happy Ending, Insecurity, M/M, Misunderstandings, Non-Explicit Sexual Content, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-13 05:57:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10507683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rougeandtonic/pseuds/rougeandtonic
Summary: Five-Time Consecutive Grand Prix Final Winner Katsuki Yuuri meets Five-Time Consecutive Grand Prix Final Winner Victor Nikiforov.or,In which things are tangled, and untangled, and tangled again. And Victor will always be there to save Yuuri.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't abandoned AT ALL. Many things are still to happen. I'm just focused on finishing See You Next (which is much closer to the end) and then I'll be able to focus on this. Thanks so much to everyone who's following along!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know how when you're working on one thing and nine thousand words of a time travel fic you didn't know you were writing spew out of your keyboard?
> 
> Um.
> 
> So, apparently this is happening?

Yuuri clutches the bouquet in his arms as he bows down from the top of the podium. An ISU official raises the ribbon over his head. When Yuuri straightens again, the weight of the medal settles on his chest. He looks over to the boards for Victor and--

\--something slams into his chest and Yuuri crashes back onto the ice. His back bangs against the edge of the podium and a heavy weight lands on his stomach, knocking the breath out of him.

The something that hits him then proceeds to lick at his chin.

The something turns out to be Makkachin.

When it comes to Victor, Yuuri has long learned not to ask 'why'. But he still asks 'how', even if he usually regrets it. And, this time, he asks how on earth Victor smuggled Makkachin into AccorHotels Arena. And how he got him past the officials and onto the ice.

The crowd is silent in what must be shock. As Yuuri tries to defend himself against the onslaught of dog tongue, he wonders if he'll have to skate another season after all. He landed a clean quad axel today. He cannot let a giant poodle knocking him off the podium be the ignominious end to his career.

Out of the silent arena, he hears, "Yuuri! Isn't he just like Vicchan?"

Yuuri jerks back from Makkachin. His father is there. He has kind wrinkles around his eyes and his usual bow tie around his neck and now Yuuri's wondering how Victor smuggled him onto the ice as well.

But his father is holding a crate of towels, like he's headed out to restock the onsen showers and--

Okay, Yuuri is not in the ice rink anymore.

Yuuri tries to breathe. He's not very successful until he dislodges Makkachin's weight from his stomach. He's vaguely aware of his father saying, "He came with a really good-looking foreign guest!"

He looks around at the wooden walls, the tables of tacky souvenirs, the guests sitting around the television. This is the Yu-topia onsen. This is his father. And this is a more vigorous, less gray Makkachin trying to climb back on top of him.

Did he hit his head when he fell? Victor's going to panic when he sees him passed out on the ice. He needs to wake up.

He blinks his eyes hard, willing himself back into the rink. But the onsen is still there when he opens his eyes. His father is saying, "He's in the hot spring right now."

Yuuri scoots back to lean against the wall and attempts to calm his breathing.

He looks down at himself. This is definitely not his costume, but he recognizes the sweater and the brown coat he's wearing. His body rounds out the sweater in a familiar-unfamiliar way. He hasn't worn either in a while. He isn't even positive they made it to St Petersburg.

He can distantly hear his father asking about something being wrong. Makkachin, with his brighter coat, invades his vision, panting happily at him.

Back when he used to have nightmares more regularly, Yuuri had googled ways to tell if he was in a dream. They'd never worked because he'd never remembered to try them.

But he remembers them now.

First, his hands. He holds them up and counts his fingers. Okay, he has ten. Ten fingers. He resolutely doesn't think about the ring that's missing from his right hand.

And then his glasses. In a dream, the world might still be sharp even without his glasses on. He slides them down and--nope.

He remembers one more thing: Time. He pushes his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose and looks up at the cuckoo clock on the wall.

The second hand ticks in a regular rhythm.

The hour and minute hands stay at four thirty-four when he glances away and back at them.

Yuuri hugs his knees up to his chest and drops his forehead onto them. If this isn't a dream, he doesn't know how to wake up from it. But it's not real, either, it can't be, and Victor's waiting for him. He needs to go back.

He tries to count his breaths. Slow. Even.

A wet tongue on his cheek jerks him back to the present. The past. Wherever he is or isn't. Yuuri blinks hard against the tears welling in his eyes and glances up. His father is still holding the towels and looking bewildered.

"Are you all right, Yuuri?" he asks.

Yuuri unwraps his arms from his legs and shakily stands up. His parents aren't used to seeing him like this. He decided long ago not to put the burden of his anxiety onto them.

"I'm fine," he says. "Sorry. I think Makkachin just knocked the wind out of me."

He reaches down to pat the poodle on his head.

"Makkachin, eh? You already know his name?"

Right. Yuuri is back in the onsen. He's wearing his old clothes, carrying extra weight and his father is telling him about a handsome foreigner and a dog that looks like Vicchan.

"Just a guess," he mumbles.

He knows what morning this is.

"Well," his father laughs. "It will be good to have a poodle around here again. I see you two are friends already."

"Yes," Yuuri says. He manages a weak smile. "It will."

"His owner was asking for you, you know," his father adds. "Maybe he's a fan? I told him you'd be down later. Said he might as well have a soak first."

"A fan," Yuuri repeats. And then it hits him that Victor is here. Victor's just outside in the onsen.

Makkachin is being too friendly not to know Yuuri, right? So maybe Makkachin traveled to this strange place with him. What if his Victor is here, too?

Yuuri needs to see him.

He stumbles for the back door, ignoring whatever his father is calling out after him. He runs through the onsen, vaguely remembering doing the same last time. But this time he distinctly knows right where Victor will be and--yes.

He pushes through the glass door to the outside pool and says, "Victor?"

He's sitting in the hot spring. White hair damp and towel on his head. Pale torso and shoulders rising out of the water.

And then Victor steps up out of the water, slim figure and sculpted muscles and Yuuri dares to hope because he looks the same.

Except, no, he doesn't. Yuuri's Victor's face is leaner, cheekbones just slightly more prominent. Yuuri's Victor has a new scar on his right calf, and another on his left knee. Yuuri's Victor has a ring on his right hand.

Victor's saying something that has him giving Yuuri a wink, but Yuuri can't hear it. His ears are ringing and he's half a second from collapsing to his knees and breaking down again.

Then Victor steps forwards him, hand held out to catch him so he doesn't fall. Hope surges through him again. Maybe this is his Victor, after all. Yuuri's not in his same body, either.

But then Victor pulls his hand back and, oh. It was just part of whatever grandiose gesture he was making. He doesn't look like he's recognizing any sign of Yuuri's impending panic.

And Yuuri's Victor is very good at recognizing that.

"What did you say?" Yuuri asks.

"I said that I will make you win the Grand Prix Final." Victor is giving him a proud smile.

It's not his Victor.

It's not his Victor. But, no matter why Yuuri's here, or what 'here' is, Yuuri needs him.

So he stumbles forward in his arms, wraps himself around his naked chest and squeezes tight as he buries his face in the familiar curve of Victor's shoulder.

"Vitya," Yuuri chokes out.

"Yuuri?"

Yuuri just holds on tighter. This Victor could so easily slip away, too.

This Victor's arms tentatively circle around his body. Through his coat, Yuuri can feel his hands come to rest on his back.

"You're getting all wet," Victor says.

Yuuri blinks away the moisture in his eyes. He is vaguely aware of his sweater getting damp where he's pressed against Victor's bare skin and the warm water seeping into his boots and wetting the bottoms of his jeans.

Yuuri steps back and swipes at his eyes. Victor looks like he's going to say something, but Yuuri knows this Victor would be a disaster at handling tears. Yuuri's Victor still needs step by step instruction.

So, Yuuri turns away, and says, "I can get you a yukata. Do you have one here?"

"Hiroko, is she your mother? She gave me a robe."

Yuuri picks up the green onsen yukata from where it's resting on the bench and hands it to him. Victor drapes it over himself and fastens it around his waist. He obviously hasn't learned how to properly tie it yet. Or maybe he's being deliberately provocative.

Knowing Victor, likely both.

He's still looking at Yuuri curiously, like he has many questions, but he doesn't know what they are yet. Yuuri can just imagine what he looks like with puffy red eyes and chubby cheeks flushed and stained with tears.

For a moment, Yuuri wonders if he should play along with what his younger self would have done and run out of here in a panic. But, whatever this is, it isn't real. It's not as if anything he does here will matter.

And he's afraid that if he lets Victor leave his side, he might disappear. And Yuuri hasn't had to be alone in six years. He can't do it now.

"Victor?" he asks, looking up at him.

"Yes?"

"Are you hungry?"

 

 

Victor digs into the pork cutlet bowl like he's starving.

"Vkusno!" he exclaims. It pulls at Yuuri's heart. He sounds and looks just like his Victor around katsudon right now.

As he's absorbed watching him eat, Yuuri catches Minako saying, "Yuuri gains weight easily, so he was only allowed to eat katsudon when he won a competition. Right?"

So they're having this conversation again. Fantastic.

"Oh? So have you eaten this pork cutlet bowl recently?" Victor asks.

"Probably," Yuuri says with a resigned sigh.

"Why? You haven't won anything." Victor goes on to say something about him having a 'pig's body' and not being able to coach him like this.

In six years, not a lot of Yuuri's politeness has rubbed off on Victor. Yuuri's Victor can still be almost as blunt and rude as this one. The difference is that he's not blunt and rude with Yuuri. His Victor rarely showers Yuuri in anything but affection. Even if it is often over the top and very public affection. And his Victor might still criticize his skating in Yakov's style. But, even with that, he frequently interrupts himself to give Yuuri ridiculous compliments, like he just can't help himself.

The first time around, Yuuri had taken this speech more stoically than this. He remembers thinking that Victor was invested in him, in wanting to coach him. And that was probably true. But now it just seems like one more thing Yuuri's lost.

"Yuuri?" Minako says. "Is something wrong?"

"No, no. Nothing's wrong!" Yuuri says quickly. "I was just thinking that we can get started tomorrow. We could go for a run around Hasetsu."

"Perfect!" Victor grins at him.

 

 

Yuuri helps Victor bring all his boxes up the stairs. And, by help, he means that he does all the work for him. At least it gives him a workout.

"As your coach, I need to learn everything about you--" Victor starts to say when Yuuri collapses, panting, upon dropping the last box on the banquet room floor.

"Your bed's not set up yet," Yuuri heads him off.

He doesn't know if Victor's going to try again at what had been, in retrospect, a rather clumsy attempt at flirting. But he's too tired to deal with that right now.

"If you'd like to sleep in my room--" Yuuri starts to offer.

"Yes!"

Yuuri stares up at him, taken aback by his enthusiasm. He wonders if it had hurt Victor when he'd said no, and kept saying no, all those years ago. In Yuuri's defense, wanting to sleep together had been a strange request for Victor's first night there. As far as Yuuri still knows, all they'd done at that GPF banquet was dance.

"Just to sleep," Yuuri qualifies the offer. Since he's not entirely sure what younger Victor had been thinking back then--rather, what he's thinking right now.

"Why, of course, Yuuri! Do you think I have anything but pure intentions?" he says in a dramatically offended voice.

For the first time since Makkachin knocked him down in the hallway, Yuuri smiles.

"Yes, I think you do," he says.

Victor pouts at him, but his eyes are sparkling.

 

"Wow!" Victor exclaims upon Yuuri leading him into his bedroom. He's turning around, looking at all the walls, and, oh.

Yuuri covers his face in his hands, feeling his cheeks burning. It hadn't occurred to him that all those posters would still be here. His embarrassment isn't even all second-hand for his younger self. Yuuri has now gone from the mess who'd broken down on Victor's shoulder before they'd even said a sentence to each other to the mess who'd broken down on Victor's shoulder and who is also a creepily obsessed fan.

Yuuri mutters, "This isn't what it looks like."

"You're a fan, Yuuri!" Victor exclaims as he rounds back on him, sounding surprisingly delighted. "Where did you get all these? I didn't even know this one existed."

Victor continues without waiting for an answer: "I'm going to have to get posters of you, too! Do you know where they sell that one from the train station?"

Yuuri feels his eyes widen as he drops his hands from his face. He vaguely remembers the humiliation of coming home and finding posters of himself plastered all over the Hasetsu station, slim and fit and nailing a jump he probably hadn't even landed that well in real life.

"I don't know," Yuuri says.

"Well, we'll find out," Victor decides.

Yuuri shakes his head. If only his younger self could have imagined Victor reacting like this to finding all those posters in his room. If this is, indeed, actually how it would have gone in real life.

 

 

Yuuri wakes up in Victor's arms. His head is nestled into his warm chest and his arms are wrapped around Victor's waist.

He lets out a pleased groan. He doesn't know why, but waking to Victor's arms around him is even nicer than usual this morning.

He rubs his hand down Victor's side, and Victor makes a soft pleased sound. Yuuri stretches up and presses his lips to Victor's jaw and then to his mouth. When their lips meet, Victor groans and tightens his arms around Yuuri, pulling him closer.

He murmurs, "And I was beginning to think that you didn't want--"

"Oh no!" Yuuri exclaims, jerking back out of his arms. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Victor's startled eyes widen.

Yuuri looks down at his bare hand. The walls plastered with posters. This isn't Victor. This isn't Yuuri's Victor. This is a man who might have been all but a stranger, but for a drunken dance Yuuri doesn't even remember.

"I'm so sorry," Yuuri says again. Now the creepily obsessed fan who'd broken down on Victor in the onsen is assaulting him in his sleep.

Yuuri would be out of bed and halfway across the room if he didn't have to climb over Victor to do it. He's surprised that Victor himself isn't halfway back to Russia by now.

Russia. Where his Victor should be flying back to with Yuuri right now. But Yuuri's 23 and in Hasetsu when he should be celebrating his fifth GPF gold. He clenches his fists, feeling the panic starting to rise in him--

But then Victor's hand grips his arm.

"Why are you sorry?"

"Because I kissed you!" Yuuri can hear his own voice on the edge of hysteria.

But Victor's lips curve up. "Do I look like I have objections to that?"

Victor's sprawled out on the bed, hand on Yuuri's arm like he's a second away from pulling Yuuri back over to him. His lips are parted, eyes are light.

No, he does not actually look like someone with objections.

Yuuri still hesitates. If somehow this is real, that means this Victor is real. And Victor would be kissing someone who's all but a stranger while Yuuri would be kissing his husband. Yuuri is certain that his Victor would want him to have this. No matter what, he'd want to be able to comfort him, even if he couldn't remember doing it. But this Victor would have no idea what he was giving him--

"You're sure?" Yuuri asks. "You don't have to."

"Yuuri," Victor says, drawing his name out in that low voice. "Get over here."

He does. It might not be the right thing to do, but Victor is obviously more than willing. Yuuri desperately needs whatever he can give him.

This Victor doesn't kiss the same as Yuuri's Victor. His lips aren't as yielding, his rhythm is different, he's too eager and too tentative at the same time.

But, even if Victor doesn't know Yuuri, Yuuri knows Victor, and knows exactly what he likes. Yuuri keeps it tender and slow, and, the more they kiss, the more Victor slips in, adjusts and his kisses become more familiar.

It feels amazing to be able to get lost in something familiar. Victor's familiar lips and familiar mouth and Victor's warm, familiar body. Yuuri wants to do this forever. To do this until his own world returns.

When he does finally pull back, Victor traces his thumb over Yuuri's jaw, eyes soft.

"Wow, Yuuri."

Yuuri holds back the urge to thank him. He's never had to know the etiquette for making out with strangers, but that would be a weird thing to do, right? Even if he is more thankful than Victor could possibly understand.

But then Victor says, "Thank you."

"You're thanking me?"

Victor hums and leans in to lick softly over Yuuri's bottom lip. And then he kisses him again.

 

 

Yuuri has spent the past year honing every part of his body into the shape it needs to be to land a quadruple axel jump. So, even at age 29, when most skaters' careers are long over, he's in fitter competition shape than he's ever been before.

Or he was, up until yesterday. In this place, whatever this place is, his body isn't as lean or as powerful as he's used to. But his endurance is actually better than he would have expected.

Of course, it still can't compare to Victor Nikiforov on a bicycle.

"So, where are we going?" Victor calls out behind him as they cross the bridge.

"Ice Castle," Yuuri pants out between breaths of cool ocean air.

"What was that? I couldn't hear you!"

"The Ice Castle," Yuuri pants out again.

"What?"

Yuuri glares at his back.

 

 

Yuuri doesn't remember exactly what they did their first day of training last time. There had been so many days of back to back workouts before Victor let him back on the ice that, even back then, they had all run together. But he figures that Victor will want to see the ice rink.

He's vaguely aware of a younger Yuuko chatting with him, but he can't take his eyes off Victor. He's skating what Yuuri recognizes as an unfinished version of his Agape choreography.

Yuuri thinks he should probably head over to the ballet studio and try to get in some kind of workout since Victor didn't even let him bring his skates. But he can't stop the nagging feeling that if he lets Victor out of his sight, he'll disappear.

It did happen once already, after all.

When Victor skates up to the boards, he eagerly asks Yuuri how he did.

Yuuri, without thinking much of it, says, "I know the choreography's unfinished, and you'd do better with the music playing, but your step sequences could still use more rhythm. You're relying too much on your speed for the triple axel. You rely on your speed a lot in general, actually. If you want to tighten your program you'll want to be able to launch yourself higher without having as much momentum on your side. And you landed on the edge of your blade from that quad flip. I know your percentage landing them in competition is high, but it could be higher if you were more precise in your takeoff --"

He's suddenly aware of everyone's eyes on him. Even the triplets are staring silently. Victor's eyes are wide and--oh.

"Sorry, sorry!" Yuuri says, waving his arms in front of himself and taking a step back. "I mean, you were great. It was beautiful. I didn't mean to--I don't know what I'm talking about."

But Victor has a wide grin on his face and, before Yuuri can back further away, he grabs him by the front of his hoodie and pulls him in.

It's not the first time they've kissed in an ice rink or in front of an audience. It's not the hundredth. But this isn't his Victor and Yuuri forces himself to pull back.

"What was that for?" Yuuri asks. He can hear the triplets' shrill cries from his other side.

"You're amazing," Victor says, grinning again. "You're right. You're right about everything. I'm going to try it again. Watch me, Yuuri."

"You come in last in the Grand Prix Finals and now you're giving Victor skating tips?" Takeshi asks as Victor restarts his program.

"Um," Yuuri says.

"And what was that kiss, Yuuri?" Yuuko squeals. "First Victor comes to coach you and then that? What aren't you telling us?"

"Nothing," Yuuri says. He looks back at the ice, where Victor's executing another quad flip that might have looked perfect to less trained eye. "I think he was just surprised."

"That's what he does when he's surprised?" Yuuko asks doubtfully.

"Sometimes."

 

 

That night, while Victor scarfs down another bowl of katsudon and Yuuri finishes his dinner of vegetables and boiled eggs, he has time to think again.

And what he thinks is, Is this real?

It feels real. Everything in the world is solid. Nothing fantastical happens. The clocks still tick just as they should. But, if this is real, does that mean his whole last six years weren't? Is the Victor who is his husband not real? Is there no one waiting for him to get back? Is there no 'back' to go to?

"Yuuri," Victor says.

Yuuri jerks his eyes up. Victor's finished his katsudon and he's eyeing him thoughtfully.

"I was thinking about what you said about my quad flip."

"Right, no, I'm sorry, I didn't really know what I was saying," Yuuri says hastily.

"But you did," Victor says. He taps a finger on his chin. "The question is, how did you? Do you have the flip?"

Yuuri thinks about that. There's a not so small part of him that would love to show off all his quads for Victor. But does he actually have them? His mind knows how to land all six quads but his body doesn't have the muscle memory for it. He might not be in the right shape, anyways. Definitely not for an axel.

So, he's probably telling the truth when he says, "No. I'm just a fan."

Victor narrows his eyes. "You're not just a fan, though, are you?"

"I can barely do the quad toe loop, and I can't do the salchow in competition," Yuuri says. He thinks that's accurate for this point in time.

"I've watched all your programs, Yuuri," Victor tells him. "You're capable of a lot better than you do in competition. What is the problem?"

Yuuri glances away and mumbles, "I'm mentally weak."

The statement was true the first time Victor came to Hasetsu and it's still true. Yuuri has just gotten better at hiding it when he's on the ice.

But he still consistently loses at least five points in a program if Victor isn't there watching. He knows this is the reason Victor decided to retire for good after only a year back on the ice. Yuuri still hasn't forgiven himself for that.

"That will be my job, then," Victor proclaims. "To make you confident."

Yuuri nods in resignation.

 

 

That night, Yuuri leaves his door open. The light from the hallway slants inside as he waits in his bed. He hadn't told Victor to come and Victor hadn't asked. Last time around, their physical relationship had been built on months of friendship. This time, Yuuri had jumped into it head first. He doesn't know what Victor might want from him now.

But then he reminds himself that he's doesn't want the same things he wanted last time, either. What he wants from Victor is just comfort, a reminder of his husband. A way not to be alone here.

He startles when he hears the door shut and the room goes dark. As the shadow of Victor's body steps closer, Yuuri pulls down the blankets and waits for him.

Victor lets his yukata fall off and slips under the covers beside him. His bed immediately warms with his presence. Victor wraps an arm around his waist and presses his lips to the back of his neck.

"Victor," Yuuri murmurs. He reaches for Victor's hand and tangles their fingers together. Victor leans forward and sucks a kiss into the crook of his neck.

"Victor," Yuuri says again. He tightens his hold on his hand. Victor kisses up his neck then behind his ear. Yuuri rolls over, grabs Victor's face in his hands and kisses back.

Eventually, Victor pulls away and presses a kiss to his forehead.

"Aren't you sore, Yuuri?" he asks.

"Sore?" Yuuri repeats in a strangled voice.

"From your workouts today?"

"Oh, right." Yuuri thinks about it. Physical pain has been last on his list of things to worry about these past couple days. His body is tired, but that's a relief, because maybe his mind won't have a choice but to sleep. So he answers, "I'm sure I will be tomorrow."

"You should get some sleep, then. I'm not going to go easy on you tomorrow." Victor gently rolls Yuuri back over to their original positions and wraps himself around him. He presses a kiss to the top of his spine.

"Stay here," Yuuri whispers.

Victor murmurs something into the back of his neck and tightens his hold on him.

 

 

Yuuri straightens from where he's brushing the cherry blossoms off of a bench. He's about to gesture to Victor to sit, when he finds himself caught up in Victor's arms and a warm, deep kiss.

"I'm covered in sweat!" Yuuri protests.

"I've wanted to do that all morning," Victor tells him. Because sweatiness is apparently just as little of a deterrent for this Victor as it is for his own. He runs the pad of a finger over Yuuri's lower lip. His bulky gray sweatshirt is soft. Yuuri absently wonders what happened to it. Victor doesn't have it anymore in St Petersburg.

Victor drops the backpack down. He hands Yuuri one of the bento boxes and takes the other for himself. Somewhere behind them, Makkachin is chasing a flower petal whirling in the wind.

"Have lunch with me, Yuuri," Victor says.

Yuuri sits down on the bench next to him and unpacks his bento. Then sighs. He should have remembered better than to let his mother pack a 'healthy balanced lunch'. Out of habit, he hands his portion of rice and meat over to Victor, and grabs Victor's tray of vegetables from his lap.

"Yuuri?"

He glances up. Had that been a strange thing to do? He and his Victor were so used to trading portions of food, he hadn't even thought about it.

"Sorry," Yuuri says. "You don't mind trading, do you? I'll remember to pack my own bento from now on."

"Do you not like it?" Victor asks.

Yuuri takes a bite of okra and reminds him, "I need to lose weight, remember?"

"Oh, right. I forgot."

Yuuri raises a skeptical eyebrow.

Victor just hums and picks up a piece of meat with his chopsticks.

"If you've forgotten," Yuuri suggests. "Then how about we finish the rest of the day's workouts on the ice?"

Victor looks back at him, lips curved into a smirk.

"Apparently someone still needs to lose weight first."

Yuuri sighs.

 

 

A couple days later, as they're walking back from the gym where Yuuri had just finished a cruel number of incline sit-ups, Victor grabs his hand and leads him on a detour to the ice rink.

"I want to show you something," Victor says.

As he puts on his skates, Yuuri wanders over to Yuuko.

"Yuuri!" she exclaims. "What's going on? Why haven't you answered my texts?"

"Oh." Yuuri pulls his phone from his pocket and glances at it. "Sorry."

"Victor kissed you and now you're holding hands," she says.

"How did you know we were holding hands?"

"Yuuri, the whole town was watching, didn't you notice?"

Yuuri had noticed holding hands with Victor. Had noticed the comfort of the way their palms fit against each other just as they always have. But he hadn't otherwise thought much of it.

"I wasn't really paying attention," Yuuri says with a shrug. Six years of Victor's overly public affections have easily overcome Yuuri's more reserved upbringing. And neither Victor, nor Yuuri these days, is a stranger to getting attention wherever they go. It still makes Yuuri feel uneasy when he gets catcalls for being one of the few Asian people in St Petersburg, but it's easy to ignore when the attention is because Victor's with him.

"Something's going on with you two," Yuuko says. "Did you meet at the Grand Prix Finals? Was that it?"

"Uh." Yuuri thinks about how to answer that one. "Something like that?"

"Hey, Yuuri!" Victor calls from the ice. "Come watch and tell me what you think!"

 

The next night, Victor announces that Yuuri needs to join him in the hot springs. Yuuri, with every muscle in his body in turns aching and cramping in protest of the new workout schedule, can't argue with that.

Victor's stepping a foot into the water when Yuuri opens the door.

"What took you so long?" Victor asks, grinning up at him.

Yuuri shouldn't be taken aback by a body so similar to his husband's (minus a couple scars and a very prominent gold ring that Yuuri refuses to think about), but the beautiful planes of Victor's body, strong muscles of his shoulders, his thighs, ridges of his abs, his--

Yuuri catches Victor smirking at him and Yuuri feels his face flushing. Can he blame that on the hot steam? It's Victor's fault, his Victor's fault, that Yuuri isn't used to going a whole week without having sex.

"If you ask me right now if I like what I see, I am leaving," Yuuri warns him.

Victor raises an eyebrow as he sinks his body further into the water. "I don't think I need to ask, do I?"

Probably not. Yuuri sighs and moves to untie his yukata but, as he does, the side of his hand brushes over his stomach. He hesitates, glancing back at Victor.

Yuuri isn't usually focused on his own appearance. He's an athlete and his body is always a tool first. He knows he can't compare with Victor looks-wise, anyways, but also knows that, for some reason, Victor doesn't care. But Yuuri also hasn't strayed far from competition shape for years. So he doesn't have the benefit of knowing if Victor is still attracted to his body like this.

"Hurry up, Yuuri," Victor says. "The water's getting cold."

"The water never gets cold here," he tells him.

"Then all the more reason to join me."

"I'm not--"

"Not what?"

"I'm not in the best shape," he says.

Victor frowns at him, looking confused for a long moment before his expression lightens.

"You're adorable like this." Victor holds out his arms and whines, "Now get in here."

Yuuri shakes his head, but smiles a little. His aching muscles would probably him get in eventually, anyways. But Victor demanding his presence and sounding so much like his own Victor is something Yuuri couldn't resist if he tried.

He sheds his yukata and steps into the familiar warm water. He hasn't been in the onsen since he appeared in this time, place, whatever this is. He doesn't know why he waited so long because it's obviously exactly what he needs. He can't hold back a groan as the heats seeps around his aching muscles.

"I can't believe you're shy, Yuuri!" Victor exclaims, grinning as he grabs Yuuri's arms and pulls him over to his side of the pool.

"I'm not, really," Yuuri says. Even if, to be honest, that is going to be a lie in any time and place.

"It's so cute!" Victor says, and presses a kiss to his forehead. He arranges Yuuri so he's sitting on the underwater ledge near him. "Now, give me your leg."

Yuuri doesn't hesitate. He never does at an offer of a post-workout massage.

This Victor doesn't know all the tells of Yuuri tensing and relaxing yet, and so isn't as in sync with his body. But it's still the most relaxing thing Yuuri's felt in a while. Except when he gets up to Yuuri's thighs and--Yuuri pushes his hands away.

Victor looks like he's about to say something, but Yuuri grabs him and kisses him instead. Victor's mouth drops open, which might be from surprise, but Yuuri will take it as invitation.

As they kiss, Yuuri moves over to straddle Victor's legs. He feels Victor's hands come to his lower back underneath the water, lightly holding him in place.

Yuuri runs his wet hands through Victor's hair, scraping his fingernails over his scalp.

Victor's hands slide down Yuuri's back and he gives his ass a squeeze.

"Fuck," Yuuri curses, clenching his hands his hair.

"So rude, Yuuri," Victor teases softly.

"This is against Yu-topia rules," Yuuri murmurs as Victor licks down the crook of his neck.

"I didn't see a list," Victor says.

"It's in Japanese. Luckily, you know the owners' son," Yuuri tells him. And, well, it's not the first time they've broken this rule.

Victor hums into his neck. Yuuri pulls him back to meet his eyes. They're beautiful. Yuuri can almost imagine he can see the stars' reflections in the light blue.

"What do you want?" Yuuri runs his hand down the hard muscles of his chest. "We can do anything you want."

"Isn't that supposed to be my question?"

"Your question?"

It's true, it is his Victor who's usually asking that question. But why? Is it the older person who's expected to? Because Yuuri is two years older than Victor here, even if Victor doesn't know it. The more experienced one? However many partners Victor has had before Yuuri, which is not as many as the internet would like to believe, Yuuri, after five years of very regular and, occasionally, very adventurous sex, is in no doubt the more experienced.

Or is it the person who is in a position to take advantage of the other who is supposed to ask that? Because Yuuri is definitely the one here who's using Victor, not the other way around.

And that thought sobers him, as if the onsen's water has suddenly turned cold after all.

He slips back on Victor's lap, lets his hands fall away.

"I'm sorry," Yuuri says, as he pushes away to sit on the ledge next to him, far enough away that they're not touching anymore. "I didn't mean--I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" Victor asks. "Why are you apologizing?"

"I, just--" Yuuri stares down. He feels like he's about to cry. He's been sleeping with Victor, letting Victor hold him, kissing him, all for his own comfort. But this feels like he's crossing an even worse line.

"We don't have to rush, Yuuri," Victor says seriously. Yuuri feels his warm, water-wrinkled hand on his cheek. "I'm not going anywhere that you're not. We have time."

Yuuri chokes back a hysterical laugh. Time. Yuuri has no time. He has nothing but time. He doesn't even know.

"I'm so sorry," Yuuri says, swiping at his eyes. "I can't do this to you, Vitya."

"What?"

But Yuuri is already scrambling out of the pool.

He doesn't leave his door open that night. When he hears Victor's quiet knock and soft 'Yuuri?', he pretends he can't hear him.

 

 

"Where did you go?" Yuuri asks when Victor comes into the common room the next morning. It was the first time Victor hadn't been there to eat with him. Well, also the first time they hadn't come down to eat together, because they'd slept in the same bed the night before.

"Just taking Makkachin for a walk," Victor tells him. Yuuri hasn't gotten much sleep himself, but, from the drawn look on Victor's face, Yuuri knows he's gotten even less. "Meet me outside when you're done eating. We'll start with a run today."

"Right," Yuuri mumbles at his eggs.

And so begins the days where Yuuri spends the mornings running after Victor's bike and doing intervals up stairs and weight exercises in the gym. And the afternoons at Minako's studio.

They eat breakfast separately now. At least, Yuuri assumes Victor eats breakfast at some point. He's usually coming back with Makkachin, who's sandy from the beach, by the time Yuuri gets up. They eat dinner together in the common room but they barely talk.

Yuuri wakes up every morning hoping he'll find himself six years older in his St Petersburg bedroom. And, every morning, he finds himself in his childhood room, alone except for posters of Victor that should have been torn down six years ago.

Yuuri's father still gushes over Victor and his mother still proudly brings him her best dishes. Mari blows a puff of smoke by Yuuri's face and teases him about getting cozy with Victor in the hot spring. Minako harasses him about rumors of him going around town holding Victor's hand.

Yuuko, when Yuuri shows up at the ice rink to collect Victor on his way back from the ballet studio, is the only one to ask him if anything's wrong. Yuuri just says he's fine and he's honored to have such a distinguished coach and she doesn't ask again.

This world still feels solid and real. It's only Yuuri who doesn't belong here.

 

Yuuri starts sneaking out at night to skate. He jogs to the rink in the dark and uses Yuuko's key to let himself in. He only turns on as many of the lights as he needs to see the edges of the ice.

He skates his old routines. Skates Victor's old routines. He doesn't bother bringing his headphones because, for most of them, the music hasn't even been made yet.

He works on jumps. He knows better than to practice quads alone, especially when he's not in the best shape to make landing them a certainty. But he also knows that there's little more for him to lose anymore. And maybe it will be like the movies. Maybe he did fall and hit his head at the Paris GPF and if he hits his head again he'll finally wake up.

He doesn't hit his head, though.

It takes two nights of practice and bruises that he has to hide from Victor the next day, but, on the third night, he's lands both the quad toe loop and salchow.

He gets his flip back the fourth night. He plays with it for a couple days, just to remember what the thrill is like to land Victor Nikiforov's signature jump for the first time.

The seventh night, he lands a quad lutz.

He practices them all each night. And, on the tenth night, he lands a clean quad loop at the end of them.

He's leaning on the boards, afterwards, panting hard. All that's missing now is his axel, and he's debating whether to, and how to, try to get that back, when he hears a, 'Yuuri' come from the blurry darkness.

He fumbles around for his glasses and, by the time he gets them back on, Victor's standing in front of him in a warm-up sweatshirt, arms crossed over his chest.

"I'm sorry!" Yuuri exclaims.

"You should be," Victor says, in a low tone.

"I know," he says. "I'm not supposed to be here. I still haven't lost all the weight yet. But--"

"Yuuri," Victor cuts through. "Is there something else you'd like to tell me?"

Yuuri glances at the ice, and then back at Victor with a wince. "That depends on how long have you been standing there?"

Victor holds up a hand and counts off:

One finger. "The toe loop, which we both know you can do."

Second finger. "The salchow, which you haven't landed in competition yet."

Third finger. "The flip, which you were very adamant that you did not have."

Yuuri bites his lip.

Fourth finger. "The lutz, of which I am the only one who has landed in competition."

Fifth finger. "The loop, which, to my knowledge, no one currently has."

"Um," Yuuri says.

"So, to answer your question, I have been standing here long enough to wonder if you're going to show me a quad axel next."

Yuuri chokes, and has to grab the boards to stay upright. Victor is still staring at him, arms crossed and finger tapping against his bicep.

"Don't tell me you have the axel."

"Not exactly?" Yuuri says weakly.

Victor exhales loudly.

"Yuuri," he says. "I came to Hasetsu because I was impressed with your musicality, not your jumps." He gestures out at the ice. "What's wrong with you? You can land five quads."

"You can land four of them," Yuuri offers weakly. He glances around for his skate guards and Victor hands them to him.

"Well, I'm not out of shape," Victor retorts. "And I don't get combined scores of 232."

"I don't either," Yuuri mumbles with a weary sigh. He collapses onto a bench and begins unlacing his skates.

"What's going on, Yuuri?" Victor asks, standing over him. Yuuri opens his mouth, but apparently the question is hypothetical, because Victor continues. "I knew that you'd been coming here, but I thought you were just--" He waves a hand. "Yuuko said you do figures when you're stressed, not quads!"

"I guess we should talk," Yuuri says dejectedly. He finishes knotting his running shoes and stands up.

"That's why I came here tonight," Victor says, following him out of the rink. "To talk. Look, I came here to tell you that--"

"You don't have to," Yuuri interrupts. "I know what you're going to say. It's okay. I understand."

Maybe Victor figured out how much Yuuri had been using him, or maybe he just realized what a mess Yuuri is, and has decided to cut his losses and return to Russia after all. It was only a matter of time. Yuuri managed to stumble into getting this right the first time around. Them being together isn't an inevitability.

"You _understand_?" Victor stops walking. "Yuuri, you can't--"

"Of course I understand." Yuuri smiles sadly back at him. "I figured you were going to leave. I know I'm not..." he gestures at himself. "Not what you expected."

Victor stares at him, light eyes wide in the darkness of the rink.

"You think I came here to tell you that I'm leaving? Do you want me to leave?"

"Of course not!" Yuuri says. "But--"

"I came to apologize," Victor says as he follows Yuuri through the front door. "I know you wanted me to be your coach and I made you feel like you had to sleep with me in order for that to happen. I will leave if you want me to, but I--"

"What?" Yuuri exclaims. The door slips out of his hand and slams shut behind them. He glances around to make sure they're alone on the street. "No, no. No. You-- Victor, why would you ever think that?"

"You don't have to try to spare my feelings, Yuuri. I know what it looked like." Victor gives a small, self-deprecating laugh. "I guess I just wanted to believe that, after that banquet, that you--Yuuri? Are you crying?"

"I'm so, so sorry." He brushes tears away from his eyes. "I never thought that you would think that."

"That's not what you thought?"

"Never."

Yuuri reaches up and wraps his arms around Victor's neck.

"I'm sorry," he says again. How can he know Victor so well and still forget that he knows him at all? How could he forget that Victor is almost as prone to misinterpreting and blaming himself as Yuuri is. That he's just better at hiding it.

Worse, the Victor here is alone and vulnerable and has just left Russia in the lowest place of his life. And Yuuri hadn't once thought of him as anything but someone who could make himself feel better.

"Yuuri, it's all right--" Victor says, but even as the words come out, Yuuri can feel him relax into his touch. Victor's arms come around Yuuri's back and Yuuri holds on to him as long as he can.

 

 

The next morning, Victor's waiting at one of the common tables in the onsen when Yuuri comes down in his warm-up pants and jacket.

There's a breakfast laid out with protein and vegetables and no empty carbs, so Yuuri knows it's for him. Victor gives him a cautious nod.

Yuuri takes a sip of his miso soup, but is too queasy to eat anything else, so he stands up.

"We need to talk," Yuuri tells him.

"You need to eat more first. You'll be hungry," Victor says.

"It's fine," Yuuri says. "I need to lose weight, anyways, remember?"

Victor frowns at him. "If you can land five quads, you probably don't."

"Not here," Yuuri hisses, glancing around at the guests at the other tables.

Victor sighs, but he still follows Yuuri outside.

Makkachin joins them as they walk up the stone steps to a grassy ledge overlooking the town. Victor heads over to a bench to sit down and Yuuri tips his water bottle over for Makkachin.

When Makkachin tires of lapping at the water and ambles over to sniff a tree trunk, Yuuri catches Victor looking back at him and realizes that he doesn't have any more excuses to put this off.

Yuuri takes a seat next to him and folds his feet up onto the bench.

"I really am sorry," Yuuri says. "I shouldn't have--"

"Please stop apologizing." Victor gives him a pained look.

"But I--" Yuuri stops himself, then starts again. "Okay. Look. Two weeks ago, I won my fifth Grand Prix Final."

"Yuuri--"

"It sounds crazy, but I swear--they were putting the gold medal around my neck and then suddenly I was here."

"I don't understand," Victor says.

"I don't either!" Yuuri exclaims, voice on the wrong edge of hysteria. He forces himself to take a deep breath. "Two weeks ago, I was twenty-nine. I had just won my fifth Grand Prix Final. I was about to retire. And then suddenly I'm 23 again and--god, never mind. You're never going to believe this. I barely believe it. Pretend I didn't say anything."

"Yuuri, just talk to me," Victor says. Yuuri feels a warm hand close over his arm. He stares down at it. "I saw you do five different quads last night. There's not a lot I won't believe right now."

"Are you saying that me doing five quads is so unbelievable?" Yuuri glances up at him.

Victor gives him a small smile. "You did score 232 in Sochi."

"Thanks for the reminder," Yuuri mutters. He glances back down over the town. There's construction on the bridge and a backup of cars waiting to cross.

"And, last I checked, I won the last five Grand Prix Finals, not you," Victor says. "Just give me a little more to work with here."

"If I had more to work with, maybe I wouldn't be here," Yuuri says. He runs a frustrated hand through his hair.

"Yuuri--"

"All right." Yuuri stands up and paces across the grass. "I was twenty-nine. The GPF was in Paris this year--that year. Yurio was still my only real competition and, once I got the axel, even if I didn't land it cleanly, I had the kind of base score even he couldn't touch. Especially since I always put the axel last. I know it sounds insane. But stamina's never been my problem and if I mess up a jump, it throws off the rest of my program--" He realizes he's babbling. "But, anyways, I landed it cleanly and I won my fifth consecutive Grand Prix Final."

He sighs and kicks at a stone.

"I had a deal with y--with my coach," he says. He feels tears come to his eyes. "That I could retire once I won five golds. And that was it. So." He shrugs. "I won and so that meant it was the last time I would ever skate competitively. And I got to finish with a perfect quad axel as the last jump of my career."

"Wow," Victor says.

Yuuri glances back at where Victor's staring at him in rapt attention.

"I know, right?" Yuuri sighs. "But there was a part of me that wished I could have flubbed it badly enough to lose the gold. Because, if I'm retired, I'm not the top skater in the world, anymore. I'm just boring old me. And my hus--who would want to stick around once they realized that that's all I really am?"

"Doesn't everyone think that when they retire?" Victor asks.

Yuuri shakes his head, turning back to him.

"You didn't," he says. "You were always going to be amazing whether you ever skated again or not."

Victor cocks his head at him.

"Anyways," Yuuri says quickly. "I'm on the podium getting my medal and suddenly I'm in my parents' onsen and Makkachin's there. And it's the day you arrived in Hasetsu."

"So you're from the future," Victor says.

"I don't know," Yuuri runs a hand through his hair. "Was it real? Or were the last six years of my life just some kind of dream? Or is this a dream? Am I in a coma somewhere in Paris and I can't wake up?" Just the thought of his Victor being there, at his bedside, monitors beeping and--"Or did I die?" he can't stop himself from continuing. "And just end up back here to relieve the time my whole life changed?"

"Yuuri."

Yuuri turns to find that Victor is suddenly right behind him. He reaches out as if to touch him but Yuuri flinches away.

"Don't," Yuuri says. "Don't. I don't--I don't deserve your sympathy. I--"

"What? Of course you do," Victor says, brow creasing down. "I care about you--"

"Well, you shouldn't," Yuuri says. "I'm just going to hurt you."

"Why?" Victor asks. "Because you think you'll leave here again?"

"Because every time I look at you I see my husband!" Yuuri yells.

Victor looks like Yuuri just slapped him.

"Victor--" he starts.

"No, I see," Victor says dully, taking a step back. Out of the corner of his eye, Yuuri can see Makkachin has looked up at the sound of yelling.

"I'm sorry," Yuuri says helplessly. "I'm so sorry. It's not--"

"You kissed me. You asked me to sleep with you. What was that, then?"

"I just felt so alone and I didn't think this was real," Yuuri says, miserably. "I'm sorry. I thought it wouldn't matter. And then when I started thinking it might be real, I just--I was selfish. I wanted something familiar--some kind of comfort, and--"

"But then I didn't live up to the memory of your husband?" Victor asks.

"No, no, that's not it." Yuuri starts to reach out to him, then stops himself. "I had to stop using you. I don't know what or where I am or if this is even real. But I can't take the chance that I'm just going to keep hurting you."

Victor looks out over the town and takes a deep breath.

"Right," he says. "So, when you got back, were you planning to tell your husband that you spent a week sleeping with another man?"

"I don't think he would see it that way," Yuuri says, staring down at the grass. But then he suddenly realizes how wrong he must be.

Because this Victor would think that way, that means his Victor would, too. And if his Victor thought that Yuuri would betray him like that--

Yuuri collapses to his knees on the ground, choking back a cry. "I've messed everything up, haven't I? I'm so sorry."

Now that he's finally broken down, he can't stop sobbing. He drops his glasses and covers his face with his hands. He doesn't even know which Victor he's talking to anymore.

"The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you, Vitya."

"You keep calling me that," he hears Victor say suddenly. "Do you know Russian? Or are we that good of friends in the future?"

"What?" Yuuri raises tear-fogged eyes from his hands.

"You keep calling me 'Vitya'." Victor frowns down at him. "And you said you were with me because it was familiar. What am I to you? Am I still your coach in the future?"

"Yes. But, not--" Yuuri drops his forehead down onto his knees and laughs bitterly through his tears. "Wow, you're really not going to like this."

"Yuuri."

Yuuri glances up. Somehow Victor is kneeling in front of him now. He's reaching out a hand when all he should be doing is running away.

"You said that when you look at me you see your husband," Victor says.

Warm fingers brush a hair back from his forehead and Yuuri nods, blinking away more tears.

"I do see my husband when I look at you," he says quietly.


	2. Chapter 2

It doesn't snow in Hasetsu in April.

He should have known this was a dream as soon as he woke up from his nap.

Yuuri slides the onsen's front door open to the sound of a friendly bark and sees... Vicchan's fluffy brown face.

Vicchan is dead.

Vicchan is here.

"Vicchan?"

Vicchan pants happily at him, and then jumps up. Yuuri raises his arms to catch him. But Vicchan -- was he always this big? -- hits Yuuri's shoulders and knocks him back.

Yuuri hears the shovel clatter to the ground just as a tight grip closes over his arm and yanks him upright.

He blinks. It's bright and -- oh, that's a spotlight suddenly shining on him. Vicchan's gone, the snow's gone, the shovel's gone. There's a blur of a very large audience in the stands before him.

He hears an angry hiss: "Keep it together, katsudon."

The blond man beside him is giving him a narrow-eyed glare. His grip on Yuuri's arm is uncomfortably tight. When Yuuri glances down at it, he hastily retracts his hand.

"Didn't you get enough attention today?" the man demands. "Try to stay on the podium at least."

He's Yuuri's age, blue eyes, a harsh slant of straight blond hair at his jaw, a silver medal around his neck. He has Yuri Plisetsky's features, short stature and trademark glare, but he's not fifteen.

And maybe he's not even that short. It turns out he's standing on a lower platform on the podium. Which means that--yes. Yuuri is on the highest one. With a gold medal around his own neck.

Suddenly he knows this dream.

Nightmare.

There is still some comfort in knowing what's to come.

He hasn't seen this red glittering costume he's wearing before, but he's not complaining. It's an improvement over the nights he's stood here without a costume at all, pudge and stretch marks bared for all to see.

He glances back out at the blur of the audience. There's a man making some sort of announcement into a microphone in front of them.

Any moment now, the laughter will start. Yuuri, who got a dismal last place, has climbed the podium as if he deserved a gold medal. If he's lucky, this will at least be a night when his parents aren't in the audience sobbing in shame.

The one constant is that, at any moment now, Victor Nikiforov is going to shove him aside without even a glance at him and--

"Katsudon!" the man next to him snaps. "Fucking breathe!"

Yuuri instinctively complies, even though for some reason the man's calling him a pork cutlet bowl, and he takes in a deep breath. And, actually, yes, that feels better than whatever he had been doing with his lungs.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

It's not the first time Yuri Plisetsky has been in this dream. But he usually looks more like himself. And this is the first time he's been angry at Yuuri because he's starting to panic.

The Yuri-lookalike turns forward and lifts his medal. Yuuri glances to his other side, at a brown-haired man he doesn't recognize. He's also holding up his medal. A camera flashes in Yuuri's eyes and--okay, the dream doesn't usually get this far, but Yuuri's been on podiums before. Not many. But he can play along.

He holds up his medal and forces a smile for the cameras. Oddly, it's applause that comes from the audience and not jeers.

Now they're getting off the podium. Yuuri follows the two other men to the rink exit.

As soon as he starts to step off the ice, he's attacked by a man who's... hugging him? And picking him up and spinning him around, laughing the whole time.

He puts Yuuri back down on the ground, keeps him pinned next to him with one arm, and with the other hand cups his face.

And... kisses him?

Kisses him deeply, as if he's done this before, as if he has no question of his welcome. As if Yuuri's lips are parted in invitation and not shock.

"Yuuri," the man's saying when he pulls back with a wide grin. "You're amazing! You did it!"

Yuuri stumbles backward out of his grasp.

Silver-white hair falls over one eye. Blue eyes sparkle. He's tall and beautiful and he's--

"Victor?" Yuuri chokes out. He takes another step back.

He hits something and hears, "Oh, pardon me, Mr Katsuki."

"Sorry, sorry," Yuuri says to the man. Then looks back at Victor.

Who winks at him.

"Let's go!" He grabs Yuuri's arm and starts to tug him forward. Yuuri stays in place and Victor gives him a thoughtful look, then says, "Oh, right!"

He reaches down to the bench behind him and hands Yuuri a pair of running shoes, and glasses, with a sheepish smile.

"What kind of coach would I be if I let you ruin your blades?"

A voice behind him growls, "The kind of coach you've always been, Vitya."

Yuuri startles and looks at the man who's come up beside him, the heavy wrinkles of his face and brown trenchcoat.

It's Yakov Feltsman, Victor and Yuri Plisetsky's coach. He doesn't know why they're all talking as if Victor's a coach, too. But he also doesn't know why no one's rightfully taken his gold medal back, either. Or why Victor kissed him.

It's not his usual nightmare.

He sinks down to the bench behind him and starts unlacing his skates. Yakov and Victor talk in Russian and Yuuri drowns them out amongst the noise of the crowd leaving their seats and the other skaters and coaches chatting around him.

No, this is not his familiar nightmare. Maybe it's meant to be a nice dream, but it's too real: the overwhelming noise of the crowd heading to the exits, reporters and their cameras trying to catch skaters for impromptu interviews, Yakov and Victor talking in Russian. Even the solidity of the bench under him is disconcerting.

Yuuri would prefer to wake up.

Someone tucks something over his shoulders. It's a jacket. And, as he puts his arms through the sleeves, he glances down at it. It's a familiar black but the design isn't the same as his usual one: there are Olympic rings below the JSF insignia.

Victor crouches before him. There an intense light in his eyes as he lifts Yuuri's hands off his skates and brings his knuckles to his lips. Yuuri startles and barely catches himself from falling backwards off the bench.

"Lyubov moya, let me do my job," he chides Yuuri. Yuuri frowns at him as Victor finishes the unlikely task of unlacing his skates. Victor is talking about something but Yuuri's ears are too full of the background noise to listen.

He suddenly feels a hand on his thigh and jerks his attention back to Victor. Victor meets Yuuri's eyes as he reaches for the medal Yuuri had forgotten he was still wearing.

Is this when the dream reverts back to his usual nightmare? Will Victor snatch it off? Will everyone start laughing now?

But, apparently, not. Victor just holds the medal between elegant fingers and gives it a considering look.

"Alas, this is the last one I get to kiss. What am I to do, Yuuri?"

"What?" Yuuri chokes out.

Victor lifts the gold medallion to his lips and gives it a tender kiss.

"Oh," Yuuri breathes out, feeling suddenly overwhelmed in a way he can't describe. Victor sets the medal gently back on his chest and then reaches up to cup the side of Yuuri's face.

Yuuri's trapped by Victor in front of him, by the arena with the only exit past a line of reporters.

And then he's trapped by the slow warmth of the kiss Victor presses to his lips.

"Oy, you two coming already?" A voice cuts in.

Victor pulls back and raises his eyebrows. "We're having a moment here, Yurio. In case you couldn't tell."

"You're always having moments," the Yuri from the podium with the silver medal says. Yurio? "Everyone's waiting for you."

"Ah, right, the press conference!" Victor jumps up to his feet and grabs Yuuri's hand. "I forgot. Come on, let's go."

 

Yuuri decides this is a nightmare, after all.

He's sitting in the middle of the table at the head of the room. The reports all want answers he doesn't have.

"How does it feel to do a quad axel?"

"Good?" Yuuri tries. There's an awkward pause as they're obviously waiting for more of an answer, but Yuuri can't possibly say anything else.

"Is it true you're retiring now?" another reporter finally asks. "What are you planning to do?"

Yuuri glances up at the cameras.

"Yes," he says. And decides to add, "And I'm still figuring out my options."

Yuri, at his right side, gives him a strange look.

"How did your husband feel when you broke his last record for combined score earlier?"

"Um," Yuuri says. He glances down at his hands and--oh. He's married. Who is he married to? It must be Victor, right? His dreaming mind must really think a lot of himself, doing a quad axel and marrying Victor Nikiforov.

"His husband says it's about time!"

Yuuri glances across the room at Victor, who gives him another wink. Yuuri feels his face flush.

 

Here is what Yuuri learns from the press conference:

 

\- This is a Grand Prix Final  
\- It's in Paris  
\- He finished his free skate with a quad axel.  
\- He is retiring.  
\- Victor Nikiforov is his coach  
\- Victor Nikiforov is his husband  
\- Yuri Plisetsky is acting weird

 

"You all right, katsudon?" Yuri asks as he joins them on the walk back to their hotel through the chilly Paris streets. To Victor, he adds, "I thought your husband was about to have a panic attack during the awards. Probably freaked about finally saying good riddance to competition."

"What?" Victor says. Sharp blue eyes turn on Yuuri.

"I'm fine," Yuuri lies automatically.

Victor furrows his brow.

"Maybe just a little overwhelmed?" Yuuri tries again. It's the truth, even if it's less about retiring and more about how this dream hasn't ended.

"That's all right." Victor leans over to kiss his forehead as he squeezes Yuuri's hand. His right hand, with the gold ring on his finger.

Yuuri leaves Victor and this older Yuri -- or, as Victor still keeps calling him, Yurio -- to a conversation in Russian as they keep walking.

Not so long ago, Yuuri had searched the internet for ways to tell a dream from reality. But he's never remembered to actually do it in his nightmares and, now, the one time he does remember, he can't actually recall any of the tests.

 

There's a large bed with a embroidered white blanket and a bottle of -- is that a travel-sized bottle of lube? -- on a nightstand. Yuuri tries very hard not to look at it.

Victor reaches for Yuuri's Olympic jacket, like he's intending to take it off for him, but Yuuri steps away and does it himself. Victor raises an eyebrow as he takes it from him and hangs it up in the closet.

Yuuri's still wearing his gold medal underneath. He pulls the ribbon over his head and looks for a place to put it. There are two suitcases next to the closet, but he doesn't know which one is supposed to be his.

In his moment of distraction, Victor steps in closer to him again. He takes the medal from Yuuri's hand and places it on the desk next to them. Then he tilts Yuuri's chin up with one hand and presses his lips to Yuuri's.

It's a slow, sweet kiss and it gives him a warm fluttering sensation in his chest. It's not until he finds himself wrapping his arms around Victor's shoulders that he realizes what he's doing.

With a startled cry, he stumbles backward.

"Yuuri, what's wrong?" Victor gives him a confused look.

"Nothing's wrong!" Yuuri says, voice high and utterly unconvincing. He glances around the room desperately, avoiding the bed and the lube again, then says, "I need to take a shower!"

Victor steps in closer with a smirk. "Let me help you out of your costume, at least."

"No need!" Yuuri says. And then rushes into the bathroom and closes the door behind him before Victor can do anything else. He leans back against the door and heaves a deep breath.

Then catches sight of himself in the mirror.

He looks different. Older maybe? There are angles to his jaw and cheeks he's never seen before. His hair is slicked back with gel. His red costume is definitely not one he recognizes.

Yuuri's older. Yuri Plisetsky's older. Is this his mind's effort to make the dream take place in the future? But he thinks Victor looks the same as he did in Sochi. Though, to be fair, he's been trying not to look too much at him, because every time Victor catches him look, he starts smiling and wanting to touch or kiss him.

And, speaking of Victor, Yuuri doubts he'll get away with staying in here for long. So he strips off his costume and moves to hang it on the door hanger, but then catches his reflection again.

It's not that he hadn't noticed that the dream had kindly omitted the extra kilos he's carrying in real life. But he's thinner than he thought. Every coach he's had, from Minako to Nakasatu to Celestino, has tried to slim down his competition shape. It figures that only in a dream would he actually succeed.

He runs a hand over the flat plane of his stomach. There's no softness there at all. His hipbones jut out over the low-slung waist of his boxer shorts.

It's foreign and unsettling. Like he's in a body that's close to, but not quite, his own.

When he comes out of the bathroom freshly showered and wearing hotel bathrobe, he catches Victor arranging a suit on a hanger.

Victor meets him halfway from the bathroom with a soft smile and a touch to his waist.

"Put this on, love. I'll be right out."

 

When Victor returns from his own shower, he's clad in only a towel.

Some of Victor's costumes haven't left that much to the imagination. Let alone the less-than-modestly clad advertisements Yuuri has never ever cut out of a magazine. So it's not like Yuuri hasn't seen him shirtless before.

But it's so much... more in real life.

Yuuri might be thin in this dream, but Victor is perfect. From the muscle of his arms and shoulders, to the ridges of his abs. The way the V of his lower abdomen shows where the towel is slung low and--oh.

Victor has definitely noticed that he's looking. Yuuri flushes at his arched brow and knowing smile.

Victor steps forward and wraps his arms under Yuuri's suit jacket, around his waist. He presses their bodies together and Yuuri can feel the firm abs he was just admiring against him. Yuuri inhales sharply.

"You're so shy today," Victor murmurs.

"I just--" Yuuri fumbles for an excuse. "I'm just tired, I guess?"

It's not untrue. He hadn't actually known it was possible to be this tired inside a dream.

"Well, that explains this, at least," Victor says, as he steps back to adjust Yuuri's expensive-looking tie.

"Oh," Yuuri says. He hadn't realized he'd messed it up, but Victor knots it confidentl. He leans back to give Yuuri a critical look and nods in approval.

 

 

It occurs to Yuuri partway through the banquet that Victor hasn't stopped touching him. And that he hasn't had the urge to pull away from him. If anything, it's comforting in the crowd of strangers to have Victor's arm around his waist and to be tucked into his side.

But who would have thought Yuuri would ever call Victor Nikiforov 'comforting'?

They're chatting with an ISU official who's asking about Yuuri's plans for retirement. Luckily, Victor doesn't seem to have a problem answering for him. Which is how Yuuri learns that he's planning to start coaching. It makes sense, Yuuri supposes. It's not like his college major in dance sets him up for any other career.

Yuuri assumes he means coaching little kids, or Juniors. He's not always the best with children, even though he really likes them. But then Victor says, with a sly grin, that Yuuri has to pass on his collection of quads to someone, after all.

Yuuri stares at him. He's not going to coach Juniors, is he?

When the official finally walks away, Victor presses another glass of champagne into Yuuri's hand. But, since Yuuri is already feeling slightly tipsy after his second one, he shakes his head.

"It's your last banquet. You sure your don't want another?" Victor says with a pout. But Yuuri is sure. This dream is confusing enough without adding more dream-alcohol to it.

"Congratulations, Yuuri!"

Yuuri turns to the familiar voice.

"Coach Celestino," he says. Victor, with obvious reluctance, lets him go so his old coach can squeeze him into a hug.

Yuuri's initial happiness at finally seeing someone familiar fades quickly when he remembers that he's just cut ties with Celestino back in Detroit. He tries to avert his eyes.

But Celestino doesn't seem angry. In fact, he's saying, "I always knew you had the potential to be great. Though that axel, that was a surprise this year. I was of the camp who thought it wouldn't happen in this generation."

"Yes, it was a surprise," Yuuri agrees hesitantly.

"And I thought it was going to be a long time before anyone matched your record five consecutive GPF wins," Celestino says to Victor.

Victor grins and snatches Yuuri back. He leans his chin onto his shoulder. "Yuuri's beaten every one of my records that matters. I would have been disappointed if he hadn't."

Yuuri feels his cheeks flush. Well, flush more, since they're inevitably already flushed from the champagne.

"It will be a very different World's this year without either of you on top of the podium. But at least one of my kids will finally get a shot this time," Celestino says.

"If you think they have any chance against Yurio, sure," Victor says lightly. "Remember who his coaches will be."

"Well, we'll see about that." Celestino smiles good-naturedly and claps Yuuri on his back before heading off.

 

 

Earlier Victor had taken his own clothes out of one of the suitcases. Of course that memory was quickly overshadowed by him dropping his towel and showing off his muscular ass and thighs before Yuuri look away.

But at least he knows that the other suitcase is his now. He finds a worn t-shirt and a pair of soft sweats and retreats to the bathroom to put them on. When he comes out, the room is dim, and Victor's sitting on the bed waiting for him in the light of the bedside lamp.

"You were so amazing today, Yurochka!" Victor says, grinning as he tugs Yuuri close.

Yuuri bites his lip. He finds himself wishing he could have started the dream earlier, so that he could have experienced skating the winning program. Even in his dream he doesn't deserve the praise people keep lavishing on him.

Victor continues, "Though I am the real winner here, you know. I get to tell everyone that my husband is not only the beautiful Yuuri Katsuki-Nikiforov, but that he won his last Grand Prix Final with a perfect quad axel."

Before Yuuri can try to comprehend the enormity of that statement, Victor slides his hands up under his shirt. They leave a warm tingling up his back. Yuuri startles and stumbles away.

"Yuuri?" Victor asks, brow furrowing.

Yuuri fumbles for an excuse, but ends up just standing there with his mouth half-open.

"You're very different today. Tell me what's wrong," he says.

"I'm just, um, tired?" Yuuri tries.

Victor stands up. He puts his hands on Yuuri's shoulders and rests his forehead against his. "You know that everything's going to be okay, right?"

"Is it?" Yuuri asks. Because he's stuck in a dream he can't wake up from. And, when he does wake up, it will be to a career that's all but over, a humiliating viral video, and no prospects for his future.

"Yes," Victor says firmly.

 

Victor wraps himself around Yuuri in bed, pulling him up tight against his chest. He murmurs something that Yuuri can't understand against his shoulder. Yuuri stiffens at first, but doesn't truly have the urge to pull away from his touch this time. He's broad and warm and comforting and Victor for whatever reason believes that everything will be all right.

It's nice that someone has faith in him, even if it's only in a dream.

Yuuri does wonder, though, where his mind is getting this version of Victor from. He's definitely not the Victor Nikiforov Yuuri's spent half his life idolizing.

When Yuuri wakes, the French hotel room is still there. Victor Nikiforov is still there. Yuuri's lying on his back, Victor with his bare chest pressed into his side, and a hand resting over Yuuri's still-slim hip.

It's been a day and a night now. He's fallen asleep and woken up.

The winter Paris light shines through the wispy curtain. He's never had a dream so linear or so solid.

 

 

Their flight isn't until that night, so Victor takes him out to breakfast. Yuuri should already know where they're flying to, so he doesn't ask.

They take a trolleybus and then walk hand-in-hand to a cafe with tasseled lamps and wrought iron tables and vintage Parisian posters on the walls.

The last time Yuuri was in Paris, he barely left the hotel except to go to the rink, and had just ordered room service with Phichit. Yuuri doesn't speak French and probably wouldn't know what to order even if he did.

When he says this last part to Victor, Victor gives him a warm smile and says, "I'll order for you! You can eat a real meal for a change."

The waitress comes to their table and Victor says something in rapid French.

Victor sits close enough that their sides and shoulders press into each other, and he keeps reaching down to give Yuuri's thigh a squeeze.

Victor doesn't know he's saying it, but with every touch, Yuuri hears 'You're not alone. Whatever this is, you're not alone'.

It might be the only thing staving off his impending panic.

When they finish eating, Yuuri is pleasantly full and Victor grins wide and pleased when Yuuri compliments the croque madame he'd ordered for him.

 

Yuuri makes it through packing up in the hotel, the taxi to Charles de Gaulle airport, the check in, the boarding, and 47 minutes on the Aeroflot plane to St Petersburg before he breaks down.

It hits him as he's looking out the window down at the dark waters of the Baltic Sea.

As they'd waited in the boarding area, Victor had taken out his phone and said something about Makkachin. In the brief moment before he'd pressed his fingerprint to unlock it, Yuuri had caught a glimpse of his lock screen.

A lock screen that matter-of-factly displayed a poorly focused photo of Yuuri on top of a podium overlaid by a date that he was five and a half years not ready for.

And then Victor had shown Yuuri a text from a 'Mila' and the selfie with a pretty young woman and a large graying poodle licking her cheek.

As the plane had taken off, Victor had flipped up the armrest between them and settled his head onto Yuuri's shoulder. Now, Yuuri can feel Victor tracing lazy patterns over the top of his thigh.

"This isn't a dream," Yuuri says softly. The thought had bypassed his conscious mind and went straight to his lips.

"What's that, Yurochka?" Victor asks lazily.

"It's not a--not a dream."

Victor sits up straight and looks at him.

"It's not a dream," Yuuri chokes out. He can feel tears welling in his eyes.

"Yuuri? What--Yuuri? What's wrong? Tell me." Victor takes Yuuri's chin in his hand and tilts his face towards him. Yuuri can't look away from the concern in his light eyes.

"I thought this was a dream, but--" Yuuri halts. He shakes his head. "I don't know what this is."

"What what is?"

Yuuri shifts and focuses on the bright orange back of the seat in front of him.

"I'm not twenty-nine years old," he says. "I've never won a Grand Prix Final. I've never done a quad axel. I can barely do a quad salchow. You--"

Yuuri looks back at him.

"We're not married, Victor. You don't even know who I am."

Victor narrows his eyes. "Yuuri--"

Yuuri interrupts with a laugh but it comes out more like a sob.

"I thought it was a dream, but it's not a dream, is it? I don't know what it is. Please tell me what's happening."

"Yuuri." Victor reaches over and wipes tears from Yuuri's cheek with his thumb. "Tell me what you're talking about."

Yuuri looks out the window, down at the dark sea. Then at the orange seat. Then back at Victor.

As incongruous as it is, Victor's the only person he has in this place. And he knows he can't do this -- whatever this is -- alone.

"Yesterday," Yuuri says. The words tumble out softly. "I was twenty-three years old. I took a nap and my okasaan wanted me to shovel snow. It was April and it was snowing in Hasetsu but it doesn't do that. I found the shovel and I opened the front door and there was this dog who looked like Vicchan but maybe more like your Makkachin. And then he jumps at me. But I don't fall. Because suddenly I'm on a podium and I just won a Grand Prix Final."

Victor's watching him carefully. Yuuri casts his eyes down to where his hand is still there warm on his thigh.

"And then it was my fifth Grand Prix Final and I did a quad axel and I'm retiring and I'm married to Victor Nikiforov and it's so confusing and nothing makes sense and it has to be a dream, right?" Yuuri asks desperately.

He looks back up at Victor. Victor still doesn't say anything.

So Yuuri continues, "Except I don't think it's a dream. This isn't how my nightmares go and I think I used to have dreams that weren't nightmares but they weren't like this. And I'm so--"

He blinks more tears down his face.

"I'm so scared."

"Are you serious, Yuuri?" Victor's voice is cautious and he looks almost as scared as Yuuri feels.

"Do I make jokes like this when I'm twenty-nine?" Yuuri asks brokenly.

Victor shakes his head and says, "Never."

There's a long pause while Victor stares into his eyes, as if he's searching for something there. Yuuri hopes he can find it.

But Victor just shakes his head again.

A cheery voice cuts in with something in Russian. Yuuri startles and looks up at the flight attendant and her cart. Then her brow furrows and she says something else in a softer voice.

Victor speaks back to her in Russian, then glances at Yuuri expectantly.

"Did she ask me a question?" Yuuri asks.

"You didn't understand?"

"I don't speak Russian," Yuuri tells him, confused. "Of course I didn't understand."

Victor's eyes widen. Then he visibly collects himself and says, "Do you want anything to drink?"

"Oh. Um, no," Yuuri says. "I'm fine."

He's anything but fine but Victor must tell the woman that he is because she takes her cart and moves down the aisle.

"So you don't remember me," Victor says.

"Of course I remember you," Yuuri says, wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie. "But the last time I saw you, you asked me if I wanted a commemorative photo."

"And you just walked away," Victor finishes. "So you don't even remember I came to Hasetsu?"

"You came to Hasetsu? Why?"

"I was your coach, Yuuri. And then I was your..." Victor gives broken-off laugh. He looks down at his hand on Yuuri's thigh and snatches it away. "Why didn't you tell me yesterday? You let me take you on a plane when we should have gone to the hospital."

"The hospital?" Yuuri repeats.

"There's something wrong. You don't just forget six years."

"You think this is real, then?" Yuuri asks. His nails dig into his palms where his fists are clenched and shaking.

Victor looks at him sadly. "This is real, Yuuri."

He reaches into the pocket of his coat and hands Yuuri a tissue.

 

Yuuri puts on his winter coat and Victor tells him there's a wool cap in the pocket and to put it on.

They meet up with Yuri Plisetsky, who'd been seated with Yakov on their flight. Victor shoves their luggage into Yuri's taxi, which apparently they were supposed to share, and says something sharp to Yuri that silences his demands about why they're not getting in with him.

Victor guides Yuuri into a different taxi and tells the driver something in Russian. Yuuri, of course, doesn't understand any of it.

The nurse in the private hospital Victor takes him to asks Yuuri a question in Russian. Victor turns to him again as if he somehow expects him to be able to answer. And then looks strangely upset when he obviously remembers that Yuuri doesn't speak Russian and he has to translate for him.

The worst part is that Victor hasn't touched him once since the plane ride.

Victor follows him behind the nurse into the exam room with a hand almost, not quite, on Yuuri's back. A doctor comes in, a man with a striped tie and a white coat with a cyrillic name embroidered on it. Victor talks to the doctor in rapid-fire Russian, and then the doctor asks Yuuri questions in heavily accented English.

No, Yuuri hasn't hit his head. He doesn't have a headache. He hasn't been vomiting, bright lights don't hurt his eyes, he hasn't had any seizures or numbness or weakness -- at which Victor impatiently interrupts that Yuuri skated a record-breaking competition a day and a half ago.

Victor goes on to ask questions the whole time the doctor's shining lights in Yuuri's eyes and checking his reflexes and making him stand with his eyes closed to prove he won't fall. Finally the doctor says something to Victor that makes him shut up.

Then the doctor leaves.

"I'm sorry," Victor tells him. "It's the best hospital I know in St Petersburg. I know it's not as nice as the ones you're used to in Japan."

"I'm not really used to hospitals at all," Yuuri says, fidgeting his hands in his lap.

Victor gives him a soft smile and says, "That's good, Yurochka."

Yuuri stares at the blue chipped paint on the plaster walls.

 

A tech in scrubs comes to get him. Victor tries to follow Yuuri through the swinging double doors but he's stopped firmly at the entrance.

Yuuri lies still in a giant whirring tube and has a silent, fifty-four minute long panic attack.

They sit alone back in the exam room, waiting for the results. Victor doesn't say anything about the tear tracks, wet down Yuuri's cheeks.

Yuuri's sitting on the exam table, hugging his knees to his chest. Victor's sitting uncomfortably in a vinyl chair. He suddenly does look older, older than Yuuri did in the mirror. And every time Victor looks back at him, Yuuri quickly averts his eyes. The clock says it's half past three in the afternoon.

"I married you," Victor says, breaking the tense silence between them.

Yuuri looks up at him.

"I know," he says.

"I will take care of you." Victor's eyes are steady on him. "I want to spend my whole life taking care of you."

Yuuri bites his lip and Victor takes a deep breath.

"Do you think you might be able to trust me? I know you don't remember why you should. But could you trust me anyways?"

Yuuri wants to cry again at those words. He says, "I told you everything" and means 'yes'.

Victor nods.

"Believe me, then." He leans forward, reaches out, then seems to remember himself and pulls his hand back. "It's going to be okay. I love you, Yurochka. I won't let it not be okay."

 

 

The doctor comes back. There's nothing wrong with his brain. There's nothing physically wrong with his brain.

The doctor's spoken to a colleague in psychiatry and Yuuri can see him in the morning.

He's it all in Russian, and when Victor says a firm 'nyet', Yuuri demands that he translate for him.

"You should know I saw a therapist in Detroit," Yuuri tells him quietly. "Celestino made me for my anxiety. It wasn't that bad. If the doctor thinks it could help--"

"I know that. But this isn't the same," Victor sharply cuts him off, then turns back to the doctor.

The doctor says something else and Victor's jaw tenses as he says 'nyet' again.

 

 

They're in another taxi, driving through the darkness of St Petersburg when Yuuri finally asks, "I thought they were trying to figure out what was wrong? What happened?"

"This isn't America, Yuuri. Or Japan. He wanted to send you to a locked inpatient ward."

Does Victor not know those exist in the States and in Japan? But Yuuri doesn't correct him. The thought of being locked away from Victor, who somehow in the last day became the only one here who's made him feel safe, is unbearable.

"He doesn't need your permission," Victor continues, jaw set, eyes on the dark, wet road. "I'm your husband. I can sign the papers."

Yuuri's chest clenches.

Victor reaches across the seat, looking like he wants to hold Yuuri's hand, but stops himself again.

"Have trust in me, Yurochka," Victor says.

Yuuri nods. Then stares down the street, watching as the shops with lit-up cyrillic lettering pass by.

 

 

It's still dark and wet when they get to Victor's apartment. Victor and Yuuri's apartment, apparently. Victor doesn't turn on too many lights. Yuuri is grateful for it. He doesn't think his overwhelmed brain can process seeing that much of the life he's supposed to be living.

Their suitcases are just inside the door, which means that Yuri must have dropped them off, despite not having looked happy at all at that plan.

Victor tries to show Yuuri the master bedroom and starts to assure him that he'll sleep in the guest room, but Yuuri balks.

"I might be better in the guest room," Yuuri tells him, looking down at the wood floor. "I mean, I don't remember, um, sleeping there before."

"Right," Victor cuts him off. He looks at him for a long moment, then leads him down the hall to a different doorway.

Victor unfolds the couch into a bed and pulls out extra blankets from a drawer underneath it. It's already quite warm in the apartment, actually, so Yuuri doesn't think he needs as many as Victor is piling on the bed.

When Yuuri closes the door behind himself, there is relief at finally being alone. He's always needed time to himself, especially when he's stressed. But as he crawls into the bed and pulls the blankets over himself, he finds himself wishing that Victor were here, holding him.

It's a strange thought.

He tosses and turns for what feels like hours. He's not sure without turning his phone on and he doesn't see a clock in the room. Eventually, he gets up. When he opens his door, he almost stumbles over the poodle lying against it.

"Makkachin," he whispers. He kneels down to give him a pet, and the poodle rolls over to his front and looks at Yuuri.

Yuuri steps over him and Makkachin follows as he pads down the narrow hallway. Yuuri stops at the first door that Victor had shown him. The one to his bedroom. His and his Yuuri's bedroom.

The door is open. Yuuri didn't actually have a plan for where he was going, but maybe to the living room. He thinks they walked through that on their way into the apartment. Maybe there's a book to read or something. Or a computer he can -- well, he's not sure if he's ready to do google searches on this future world or not.

But, instead, he hesitates in front of bedroom.

"Yuuri?" he hears Victor ask. He must have been awake and seen Yuuri's profile in the dimly lit nightlights in the hallway.

"I'm sorry," Yuuri says quickly. "I just couldn't sleep."

Victor sits up in bed, and the blankets fall down into his lap. Yuuri can make out that he's shirtless, which despite how warm the apartment is still feels like a strange thing to be in December in Northern Russia.

"I know I'm not your Yuuri," Yuuri says.

"You are--" Victor begins to say, but Yuuri continues quickly.

"But I don't really want to be alone." He wraps his arms around himself.

"You don't?" Victor says, and he sounds surprised.

"Can I sleep here?" Yuuri asks. And then feels his cheeks flush. "I understand if you don't want to. I mean, I'm not -- I'm twenty-three and you don't really know me. You don't have to feel obligated--"

"Yuuri," Victor says in a low voice, almost like he's reprimanding him. "Come here."

Yuuri swallows and approaches the bed. He hesitantly picks up the blankets and settles in beside Victor. He can see Victor shift to lie back down, too. But it's a large enough bed that there's a gulf between them.

"You never fail to surprise me, Yurochka," Victor says, sounding almost happy.

"Oh. That's good," Yuuri says. He's read in more than one interview about how much Victor likes surprising people with his programs. He wonders if that's how twenty-nine-year-old Yuuri has managed to hold onto him for so long.

They lie in bed together for a long time. The proximity makes it worse than being alone, it turns out. There's no way Yuuri's going to be able to sleep so close to Victor and yet have half the bed between them.

It's not like he can just ask him to hold him like he did in Paris. He can't impose like that.

But it's actually Victor who speaks.

He whispers, almost as if he doesn't expect Yuuri to hear, "Please don't take your ring off."

Yuuri, startled, turns his head to face him. There's enough light to make out his eyes and Victor's looking at him intently.

"Victor?"

"Promise me you won't," Victor says desperately, looking straight into his eyes. "Even if you never remember why you gave it to me."

"I wasn't planning on taking it off," Yuuri says, confused. He doesn't know where this is coming from. If anything, the ring is such a barely noticeable weight on his finger, he keeps forgetting it's there.

"I've never deserved you," Victor is continuing anyways. "You're perfect at twenty-nine and you were perfect at twenty-three."

Yuuri reaches out and touches Victor's shoulder.

And suddenly finds himself grabbed into a tight hug, Victor's arms squeezing around him. Victor's face is buried in his shoulder.

"Victor?" Yuuri says brokenly. He sorts of wants to hug Victor back, but Victor's arms are around his and he's pinning him in place.

"I can be the one who loves you more. I always have been. Just give me the chance to win you over again," Victor says, face still buried in the crook of Yuuri's neck, bare torso pressed into him.

"I won't take it off," Yuuri promises softly.

Victor squeezes him tighter.

"I need to breathe, though."

Victor immediately releases him and starts to move away. Yuuri grabs his arm.

"You didn't touch me all day," Yuuri says quietly. "When you thought I was still your Yuuri, you..."

He's not sure how he wants to finish the sentence, but Victor does it for him.

"I was clingy," Victor says, voice rueful. "I know I'm clingy. It's not my best trait. I think you've just gotten used to it by now."

He tries to back further away, but Yuuri tightens his grip on his arm and Victor stops. Yuuri wraps his arm tentatively around Victor's back.

Victor exhales in what sounds like relief and circles his arms around Yuuri again.

Victor rubs a hand up and down Yuuri's back, over his thin t-shirt. For a long time, they lie together in silence.

Eventually Yuuri bites his lip and says, because he needs to, "You kissed me. When you thought I was your Yuuri."

He can see Victor's soft smile in the dark. He says, "You're always my Yuuri."

Yuuri doesn't know how to finish what he's trying to say. But Victor reaches up and runs a thumb over his bottom lip. Yuuri's heart races.

"Do you want me to kiss you now?" Victor asks.

Victor's loved him enough to stay with him for almost six years. Victor loved him enough to marry him. Victor loves him enough to beg him to stay. Victor loves him enough to say 'I can be the one who loves you more' and it cracked Yuuri's heart in two.

Yuuri doesn't have an excuse not to have the courage.

So he whispers, "Please."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the kind responses to this chapter! Here are [my reference pics of sad little Yuuri](https://68.media.tumblr.com/43f1f59c9a506ebe372f4e481d5f82ff/tumblr_oo1jb8YM3C1w5hxipo1_1280.jpg) I stared at while I wrote this.


	3. Chapter 3

"You said that when you look at me you see your husband," Victor says.

Warm fingers brush a hair back from his forehead and Yuuri nods, blinking away more tears.

"I do see my husband when I look at you," he says quietly.

\---------------------------

A moment passes and then Victor breathes out, "Yuuri."

Yuuri feels a thumb run over the top of his cheek, wiping away the tracks of tears.

He drops his eyes to where his fingers are clenched in the grass. There's dirt under his nails. And maybe it's not the world that's wrong here. Maybe it's just him.

Yuuri's chest tightens.

"Just because that's the way it happened for me, doesn't mean it has to be that way," he says. "Everything's already different. If you want to leave--"

"Tell me about our wedding."

Yuuri snaps his eyes up, startled.

"Our wedding?" he repeats.

Victor nods. He's crouched before him. His eyes are light and his hand is still warm on Yuuri's cheek.

"Um. What do you want to know?"

"Where was it? Here in Hasetsu?" Victor asks.

He lowers his hand from Yuuri's face and reaches for one of his hands instead. He gently unclenches Yuuri's fingers from the grass and cradles his hand in his.

"It was supposed to be." Yuuri bites his lip. "We had a deal. We'd get married when I got a GPF gold medal. When I won my first one, it was still the middle of the season and, by the time World's was over -- you won World's that year -- we still didn't have anything planned."

Yuuri stares at where Victor is stroking his thumb over his knuckles.

"It was a couple weeks after that," he continues. "We were out in South of Nevsky. We'd each had a couple drinks. We weren't drunk, but--anyways, you said you were tired of not being married to me. And that we should just do it tonight."

He bites his lip.

"This was two years from now. Two years from, uh, last Saturday, actually. So I'd known you long enough that I should have known that you weren't talking hypothetically."

"What did we do?" Victor asks, lips twitching.

"You know how there's a thirty day waiting period in Russia for a marriage license?"

"I've never had the occasion to research that, you know."

"Right. There is, though. But I wasn't even Russian, so I needed at least a dozen extra documents and half of them had to be translated and notarized. So there was no way we could have gotten married that night. Or any night, really, for months probably."

"Okay?"

"But there, uh, was another way."

Victor raises an eyebrow. "Money?"

"Money," Yuuri confirms. "So you called Yakov and I called Yurio --"

"Yurio?"

"Yuri Plisetsky," Yuuri says. He shakes his head. "I don't think I want to know how Yakov did it. But he got someone who was willing to ignore our lack of documentation and meet us at one in the morning. It was some government building near Dvortsovaya Ploshchad and we actually got lost in it at least five times trying to find the right office. But then Yakov took the lead and..."

He glances up again and Victor gives him a small smile.

"So, anyways," Yuuri says. "The official started asking you and me questions, but it was in Russian so fast I couldn't understand. And you kept laughing and kissing--" Yuuri stops himself. "--um, anyways, you were completely mistranslating everything he said. So Yurio got fed up and ended up giving us the angriest translation of wedding vows ever."

Yuuri continues, "And then it turned out that Yakov had been secretly recording the whole thing. And then Phichit -- he's a skater from Thailand, we were rinkmates once -- got ahold of it and Mila helped with the subtitles and it kind of went viral."

"Our wedding video went viral?" Victor asks, looking pleased. "That's amazing!"

Yuuri shrugs helplessly. "Yeah. I guess viral videos are kind of our thing?"

He drops his eyes back to his hand, still in Victor's. He turns it over and Victor slots their fingers together.

Then he pulls Yuuri to his feet and cups Yuuri's face in both hands. Then presses a long, tender kiss to his lips.

"Victor?" Yuuri asks brokenly.

"I want that," Victor says, smiling. He strokes a hand back through Yuuri's hair. "I want all of that."

"Victor," Yuuri repeats. He feels tears well up in his eyes again. "You can't--don't say that."

"Why not?" Victor asks.

"I'm not--you don't know me," he says. He steps backwards, shaking his head. "We had one drunken dance that I don't even remember and then you're here for a couple weeks and I used you and I lied to you."

"So?"

"So?" Yuuri says. "Are you even listening? You can't just say that's what you want."

"What do you want me to be to you, Yuuri?" he asks.

Yuuri remembers a conversation on the beach, probably not long from now, in which Victor asked him the same thing.

"I think you know that answer to that," he says quietly.

Victor slides his arms around Yuuri's soft waist. And he asks, "Then how many yen do you think it would take to bribe the Japanese government to make me Victor Nikiforov-Katsuki?"

Yuuri chokes out a laugh at that. He reaches up and circles his arms around Victor's shoulders, and rests his head on his chest.

His Victor would want him to have this, right? This Victor isn't his Victor. But he's still Victor.

And Yuuri's Victor wouldn't want him to throw away the only good thing in this strange and confusing life, would he?

"It's Katsuki-Nikiforov," he mumbles into Victor's soft sweatshirt.

"That does sound better," Victor agrees.

Yuuri just holds him for a long moment as Victor strokes his hands up and down his back.

"It's been weeks now." Yuuri breaks the silence. "I still don't know why I'm here."

"Time travel," Victor says.

Yuuri sighs.

"Time travel doesn't exist," he says.

"Does any other explanation exist, Yurochka?"

Yuuri exhales in resignation. "Fine. We'll call it time travel."

"Then is it selfish to say I hope you stay here?" Victor asks.

"Yes."

Victor pulls him closer and Yuuri feels him fist his hands into the back of his shirt.

"I hope you stay, anyways."

 

 

It's Yuuri who goes to Victor's room that night.

Victor's sitting on the edge of his bed, typing on his phone. He's in sweatpants and a gray t-shirt. Yuuri knows this shirt. In his memories, the fabric is thinned out from too many washes and there's a small hole at the back of the collar. Tonight, it's still intact.

Yuuri takes a step inside and Victor raises his head and grins at him.

They stare at each other for a long moment. Then Yuuri takes another step into the room and licks his lips.

And then Victor comes to him. Yuuri's breath catches as Victor pushes their lips together. It's a tender kiss at first but quickly becomes deeper. Hungrier.

Yuuri tangles his fingers in Victor's hair and Victor grabs his ass. Yuuri groans and Victor turns them around, pushes Yuuri backward and lays him on his bed without breaking their kiss.

Victor climbs on top of him and Yuuri wraps his legs around his waist.

"Vitya, come here," Yuuri complains, trying to tug him down closer.

"I am here, Yurochka," Victor says. He leans in and kisses the side of his neck. Yuuri arches to the side to give him better access.

"Please, just--please," Yuuri says. He pushes his hands up under Victor's familiar shirt and runs them up his hard, muscled chest. Victor moves to let him push the shirt all the way off.

Then he grabs for Yuuri's soft thighs.

Yuuri holds Victor's head in his hands and gives him another hungry kiss. Victor reaches for the waist of Yuuri's sweats. Yuuri isn't wearing anything underneath. He won't pretend he didn't know why he was coming here tonight.

"Take them off, Vitya. Get them off."

"Yes," Victor breathes. He pulls back and tugs Yuuri's sweats down off of him. Then does the same to Yuuri's shirt and his own sleeping pants.

He climbs back over Yuuri and kisses him again.

Yuuri's dying for this. The intimacy of sex, the familiarity in Victor's body, the feeling of being filled and taken care of.

He tells Victor this, whispers it in his ear and Victor inhales sharply, hands freezing on his ass.

"Please tell me you have supplies," Yuuri begs.

He had scoured his twenty-three-year-old self's room. He remembers he had bought lube and condoms at some point during the months Victor had been there, but this time was obviously before that embarrassing trip to the drug store.

"God, yes, I do." Victor scrambles up over him for the drawer of his bedside table and throws its contents onto the bed.

"I know everything you like," Yuuri whispers. He grabs for the lube as he licks a stripe up Victor's neck, over the pulse point. "I'll make it good for you."

"You're already killing me, Yurochka," he groans out, fingers digging in painfully over Yuuri's hips.

"Then we'll die together," Yuuri tells him.

 

 

Their first time, their real first time, was nothing like this. Victor had laid him out gently, had gone so slowly, had asked him over and over again if he was sure, asked if he was hurting him, told him that they could stop at any time. Yuuri had been so worried he'd do something wrong and Victor -- Yuuri realized in retrospect, years later -- had been so scared he'd make Yuuri run away.

It's so different this time. Yuuri needs and needs. And Victor somehow still knows how to meet him where he is.

 

 

"Try again," Yuuri says a couple weeks later as Victor skates back over to him. "Pay more attention to your free leg this time."

"You're harder to please than any judge I've met, Yurochka," he tells him, but he's grinning happily as he says it.

Yuuri has pieced together, from comments over the years, what a dark place Victor had been in when he'd given it all up to come coach him. Victor had always been too skilled at hiding behind carefree smiles for his own good.

But Yuuri has almost six years practice finding him now.

And, in front of him today, is a Victor who's inspired for the first time in a long time.

It doesn't make it all worth it, losing six years of his life to come here. But it's something.

"Are you complaining?" Yuuri asks, raising his eyebrows.

"Never." Victor winks at him, then skates off to try again.

"I'm starting to wonder who's coaching who here," comes Yuuko's voice from beside him. Yuuri glances at her quickly, then back at Victor.

"It's not like that," Yuuri says, as Victor takes off.

"Are you sure?" she asks. "You're giving Victor Nikiforov pointers on his quads."

"We just haven't... I mean, he can't coach me until I get back to my weight before the Grand Prix Final. And I've been busy with Minako and Takeshi's workouts, anyways," Yuuri says. Victor still teases him about it, as if he really thinks Yuuri needs the motivation to get in shape. But at least he hasn't tried to keep Yuuri off the ice since that night Yuuri had unintentionally shown him five quads.

In fact, he regularly urges Yuuri to demonstrate for him. Yuuri had had to work harder and smarter to perfect his jumps than Victor ever had to. Each quad had come naturally to Victor if he tried enough times. But Yuuri, as a result, has better, more efficient form.

"I've watched all your competitions, you know," Yuuko is saying. "Are your nerves really so bad you can't do these with an audience?"

"I guess so," Yuuri says. It was the best excuse he could come up with for his inconsistency and that he'd only ever tried the quad toe loop in competition. Whenever Victor brings up the coming season it's to excitedly plan how they're going to reveal Yuuri's talents.

He'd said once, "Obviously you'll hold back in the block competition. But do we do all six of your quads in your first Grand Prix--"

"It's the Cup of China," Yuuri had interrupted.

"At the Cup of China. Or do we spread them out? Do we wait to wow everyone with a perfect quad axel at the Finals?"

Yuuri hadn't answered that, but Victor had continued, not seeming to mind.

"You'll win no matter what, you know," he'd said with an excited grin. "With your jumps and your performance scores, you'll inspire the whole crowd every time!"

Yuuri had nodded. He knows this year's competition and knows it's true. Yurio had been a worthy competitor in Yuuri's last Grand Prix Final, but his record-breaking short program this year wouldn't touch what Yuuri could do now.

But Yuuri's application form still sits only half-filled out on his desk. The deadline for submission is in two weeks.

There's fully filled out form Victor doesn't know about hiding beneath it.

"Maybe you'll do better with Victor this year to give you confidence," Yuuko is saying, bringing Yuuri out of his thoughts.

"Maybe," Yuuri says.

Luckily, Victor comes skating back up to him then, saving him from having to explain any further to Yuuko.

"How was that?" he asks.

"Your free leg's better," Yuuri says. And then proceeds to give him feedback on the rest of his form.

 

 

They're in Victor's bed one night, covered in sweat and tangled in the sheets. Victor's idly caressing the small swell of Yuuri's stomach.

"You're lucky I'm too tired to be self-conscious right now," Yuuri informs him with a yawn.

"What?" Victor asks. He seems confused until he looks down, as if he hadn't noticed where his hand is still a weight over Yuuri's stomach. "Oh, I forgot you were shy about your weight! But you've lost so much of it. And it's not your fault, anyways. You weren't the one who gained it all."

"I was once," Yuuri says, too sleepy to put the full amount of crankiness that Victor deserves into his voice.

"Well, you still shouldn't be shy about it. You know I don't mind, right?"

"You've been calling me 'piggy', so, no, not really," he says, turning to rest his head on Victor's muscled chest.

"But--"

"It's okay, my Victor did the same thing," Yuuri says through another yawn. "Of course he'd never say that now. He'd keep saying I was beautiful even if it wasn't true. But he's so, so good to me so I've never stopped dieting, even in the off-seasons, I want him to have a husband he's attracted to--"

" _Yuuri_." Victor's voice takes on a strangled tone.

"It's all right. You don't mind it that much," Yuuri murmurs. Victor's still tense, so Yuuri pats his chest reassuringly. "I'll lose the rest of it soon. And if I haven't completely messed up this timeline, you'll start being better to me soon, too."

There's a long silence.

"Can I tell you a secret?" Yuuri asks in the daze of half-sleep.

He feels Victor's nod.

"Every morning, I forget," he says.

"Forget what, Yurochka?" Victor asks when Yuuri doesn't continue.

"Oh. That you're not my Victor," Yuuri says. "I wake up with you and you look almost the same. But then I remember."

Another pause, during which Yuuri thinks he might have fallen asleep, until Victor's voice jolts him back awake:

"You wish I was your Victor."

"Of course," he murmurs.

Victor's arm tightens around him, and he says quietly, "I wish I was, too."

"Stop worrying," Yuuri says with sleepy reassurance. Victor would make a much better pillow if he'd relax a little. "I've loved you longer and needed you more than you could ever need me. As long as I get to keep you, it's okay."

He thinks Victor might be saying something else, but Yuuri can't fight sleep any longer.

 

 

"That's a little better," Yuuri tells Victor the next morning. "But let me show you again how to get more power. I know you've got more upper body strength than me and it gets you height, but you can't be lazy."

"I'm watching," Victor says. He rests his finger on his chin and waits by the boards.

Yuuri skates to the other end of the ice. He makes sure he plans his quad lutz so Victor can get the best view of his technique.

"That was beautiful," Victor tells him earnestly. "You're so beautiful on the ice, Yurochka."

Yuuri rolls his eyes and asks, "Do you see what I mean, at least? With this extra weight, there's no way I'd be able to get the height I need if I took off the way you do."

For some reason, Victor flinches at that. Yuuri frowns at him. He's been acting strangely all morning. He'd been subdued on their jog over here, then started messing up parts of his lutz he'd already had down.

"Try it again," Yuuri tells Victor.

Victor skates to the end of the rink and gets up speed to do the jump. Yuuri can see where he messes up on the take-off and how it results in him touching down on the landing.

He lacks his usual enthusiasm when he skates back to Yuuri.

Yuuri tells him, reassuringly, "It's all right. Even Victor Nikiforov is allowed to have off days."

"Right," Victor says, eyes not quite on him.

"If you want," Yuuri starts. He's been meaning to tell him this for a while, and hopes it will cheer him up. "I'll make you the same deal I made Yurio. You get all the other quads and I'll teach you the axel. But you have to learn how to make them all tight and efficient first, or you won't be able to do it, anyways."

There is finally a hint of a spark in Victor's eyes when he looks back up at him from under his silver bangs.

"I'm only one quad away," Victor reminds him. "Yuri only has two total."

"In six years, Yurio has five," Yuuri says with a shrug. "We were going to start working on the axel right after the Grand Prix Final."

Victor raises his eyebrows. "And how many do I have in six years?"

Yuuri gives him a gentle smile. "In six years, you're almost thirty-three. You're retired, Vitya."

"Right."

"Look happier." Yuuri pokes his shoulder. "You're not an old man right now. And not everyone gets to marry someone willing to teach them a quadruple axel."

But the joke falls flat, and Victor looks away.

"Do you really think we'll still get married this time?" he asks.

Yuuri's heart falls.

It had taken his Victor years to convince Yuuri of the improbable fact that he was never going to leave him. And now Yuuri had gotten complacent. He'd forgotten, once again, that this wasn't his Victor.

"If you don't want that, it's okay," Yuuri says. It's not okay. It's going to shatter him to pieces. But if Victor's had time to think it over, had time to see everything that's wrong with Yuuri--

"Maybe this is your chance to find someone better," Victor says.

"What?"

"You could start over," Victor says. "Maybe that's why you're here at this time."

It takes a moment for his words to sink in, and then a heavy weight lands on Yuuri's chest. He feels tears well in his eyes.

"How could you say that?" he says in a small voice.

"Don't you remember last night?" Victor asks. His eyes are narrowed and there's a harsh note in his voice that Yuuri rarely hears.

"What are you talking about?" Yuuri asks quietly. They'd had sex and then fallen asleep. Nothing had happened.

"You don't remember everything you told me?"

Yuuri swipes at his wet eyes as he tries to think. He vaguely remembers them talking before he fell asleep, but the memory is hazy. His Victor teases him about his pillow talk all the time. Yuuri suspects he makes up ridiculous things that Yuuri says just to embarrass him. But he's never been upset about anything he's said.

"What did I say?" Yuuri asks numbly.

Victor sighs. "Nothing. Don't worry about it."

"No, tell me--"

"Don't you have to be at Minako's now?" Victor interrupts. "You're going to be late."

 

 

Victor's out with Makkachin when Yuuri gets home, so he eats his small portions of dinner with Mari. He lets her do the talking, even though she spends half the meal teasing him about how he hasn't spent a single night in his own bed all week.

He wonders if that will change, anyways. He doesn't understand what's happening but whatever it is has left him devastated.

Makkachin seems to sense his distress as well as his older counterpart always does, and he crawls into bed beside him later that night. Yuuri hugs his arms around his chest and buries his forehead in his curly-haired neck.

He doesn't know whether to be relieved or not at the knock that finally sounds on his door.

In the darkness, Victor comes to sit on the mattress bedside Yuuri. Makkachin gets up and curls around Yuuri's feet.

"What do our wedding rings look like?"

Yuuri's startled by the random question, so it takes him a moment to answer, "Gold."

"Gold?"

"Just regular gold bands," Yuuri says. "Nothing special."

Except they were special. They were so, so special.

Victor doesn't say anything for a while, so Yuuri finds himself continuing to talk, even if it's half into his pillow. "I bought them in Barcelona before the GPF. I hadn't exactly meant to propose. But later you thought we were engaged -- though I don't know why you ever thought I'd have the courage to propose to you. But it wasn't like I didn't want to marry you. And even if I hadn't actually meant to ask the question, you still said yes, so..."

"That's a strange way to get engaged," Victor says.

Yuuri sighs and scoots up the bed to sit with him.

"Maybe," he says and he runs a hand through his hair. "It's good you misunderstood, though. If you hadn't, we probably would have gone separate ways after the GPF. We might not have stayed together in the end."

"Are we really so fragile?"

Yuuri lets out a bitter laugh at how he can ask that after telling him just hours ago that Yuuri should find someone else.

"I don't know," Yuuri says. "Sometimes I think so, sometimes I think that no matter what--" He shakes his head. "You know, I never told you that."

"Told me what?"

"That I hadn't meant to ask you to marry me," he says.

Victor looks at him for a moment, his expression inscrutable in the darkness.

"If you want to give me a chance," Victor starts. He grabs for Yuuri's hand and his grip is painfully tight. "I will try to get this right with you."

"What--"

"I don't ever want to make you cry again."

He's not sure what Victor's been thinking all day, or how they ended up even having this conversation. So he just sighs and tells him, "That's pretty unlikely. You should know I'm the skater with the heart of glass."

"I'm still going to _try,_ Yuuri. I've been in love with you since I saw you at the Sochi banquet," Victor tells him.

Yuuri knows that it's not true. This Victor's timeline was the same as his Victor's up until Yuuri showed up from the future. And his Victor hadn't thought about him that way until months and months later. Things were different in this timeline, obviously, between Yuuri's throwing himself at him before he'd even stepped out of the hot spring and then telling him they were meant to get married.

But, even now, he knows Victor doesn't feel that way about him yet.

Maybe Yuuri can convince him to, someday, though.

"Stay with me, Vitya," Yuuri says, squeezing his hand back. He tugs Victor down after him into his narrow bed.

 

 

There is nothing attractive about Yuuri's left foot. There's a blister over his heel from the new running shoes he's breaking in. There's a rubbed-off abrasion over his ankle from where he'd tied his skates too loose the other day. The nail of his big toe is starting to blacken from too many hours in Minako's studio.

And that's not to mention the calluses and various healed-over scars from eleven years in skates. At least there are fewer now than on his twenty-nine year old feet.

Victor, however, doesn't seem to notice any of these things when he picks Yuuri's foot up out of the hot springs and presses a kiss to the bottom of it.

"Victor!" Yuuri squeals and almost kicks him for how it tickles. But Victor holds tight onto his foot and just laughs.

"Relax. I'm giving you a massage," he says.

"I don't think that's what this is called," Yuuri tells him.

But Victor just begins to push his thumbs into his heel and Yuuri does relax, despite himself. He leans back into the rocky ledge behind him. When Victor moves onto his midfoot, he lets out a groan before he can hold it back. And then glares at Victor when he smirks at him.

"You're working too hard, Yurochka," Victor complains to him. "Look what you're doing to your beautiful feet."

"I'm barely working hard enough," Yuuri says. Even though the hours and hours of cross-training he's doing every day probably beat even the toughest training days Victor's put him through in the last five years.

Victor, strangely, had stopped pushing him to get in shape weeks ago. He hasn't even mentioned Yuuri's weight lately and had started forgetting to draw him up weekly meal plans. But Victor putting pressure on him had never been Yuuri's motivation, anyways. Yuuri doesn't like the feeling of being out of peak form. It makes him feel itchy and self-conscious and young. And, though he knows most athletes at almost thirty would kill to wake up six years younger, Yuuri just wants to feel twenty-nine again.

His big toe is suddenly enveloped in something wet and warm.

"Victor!" Yuuri bites back a ticklish giggle.

Victor lets Yuuri's toe slide out of his mouth and raises an eyebrow under the wet tips of his white hair.

"This is the least professional foot massage ever," Yuuri complains.

"I don't know," Victor muses, going back to rubbing Yuuri's insole. "Chris showed this place in Beijing where--"

"Yes, I know. I know," Yuuri interrupts. "You don't have to tell me."

"I told you about it already?" Victor asks with a put-upon sigh. "Future Victor has ruined all my stories."

"Not just told me. My Victor dragged me there a couple years ago and--" He watches Victor's eyes widen and claps a hand over his mouth. "Never mind! Let's not speak of this again."

"You went there?" Victor asks, hands stilling over his foot.

"I said we weren't speaking of this again!"

 

 

It's a month later and they're lacing up their skates side by side.

"Remember that night when you saw me do all those quads?" Yuuri asks Victor.

"You actually think I'm capable of forgetting that?"

"I want to show you something," Yuuri tells him. "Wait here."

Victor raises an eyebrow but leans his elbows back on top of the boards.

Yuuri adds, "Don't take your eyes off me."

"I never do, Yurochka," he says. Yuuri nods at him and skates to the other side of the rink. He can see Yuuko and Takeshi talking over by the desk but the triplets are, thankfully, still in school at this time of day.

Yuuri clenches his fists and takes a few deep breaths. Then pushes off.

He's builds up speed and then launches into a quad toe loop and then lets the momentum help carry him into a quad salchow. He gives himself a moment for recovery and then goes into the flip.

He lands them all cleanly.

He has to build up more speed for the lutz, but he lands it, too. And then the loop right after.

Yuuri knows his landings wouldn't be this consistently good in an actual competition, even if he was twenty-nine again with Victor as his coach. But, in an empty rink, with only Victor's eyes on him--

He allows himself half a turn around the rink to breathe. He couldn't have done anything like this with so many quads one after the other at any other time. But now that he's back in shape, his extra years of knowledge combined with his twenty-three-year-old stamina make him feel like he could fly.

He glances over at Victor. He can't see his expression without his glasses on, but he knows he's watching. Yuuri gives him a small smile and takes another deep breath. He's skating for Victor. He's always skated for Victor.

He needs more speed, a lot more speed, this time. And he has to enter it without a split second's hesitation or he'll lose it. He can still feel Victor's eyes on him and he knows, he knows he can do it. He launches up from a forward takeoff and: one, two, three, four--

And a half.

The landing jars him with more force than any of the other quads. But he's ready for it.

He lets his skates glide to a stop, panting. Suddenly he's enveloped in strong arms and spun around in something that's not quite a lift, but also isn't entirely not a lift.

"Victor?" he pants out when Victor lets him down.

"That was amazing!" Victor's grinning as wide as he's ever seen him. "You're amazing!"

Yuuri gives him a shy smile back, and then Victor's arms, which have never left him, tighten around him and he's kissing him hard and deep. Yuuri throws his arms around his neck, for balance if nothing else, but has to pull back from the kiss since he still hasn't completely caught his breath.

He becomes aware of cheers on the side of the rink and turns without leaving Victor's arms.

Yuuko and Takeshi are standing there clapping hard and Yuuko's giving him a cat-call. Yuuri's sure his cheeks would be flushed if they weren't already from the exertion. He hadn't meant to show off, but... well, maybe he had meant to. But he'd only actually meant to show off for Victor.

"I can't wait to see you at the GPF!" Victor says. "You're going to inspire the whole world!"

Yuuri smiles back at him but feels a twinge in his chest at that.

 

 

"I am not," Yuuri declares the next day. "Having sex with that thing on the wall."

"That 'thing'," Victor says, scooting forward and wrapping his arms around Yuuri's waist to tug him back onto the bed. "Is _the_ Katsuki Yuuri. The top men's figure skater in the world for five years running--"

"Victor."

"--Future holder of SP, FS and combined score records. First to achieve a ratified quadruple axel. First to marry Victor Nikiforov -- oh, excuse me, Victor Katsuki-Nikiforov."

Yuuri leans back to hide the side of his face in Victor's chest and groans. And--

"Wait," he says. "First?"

"Does last sound better? Last to marry Victor Katsuki-Nikiforov."

Yuuri turns around in his arms and pokes Victor's chest through his training jacket. He refuses to be charmed. "Take it down."

Victor raises an eyebrow. "You get twenty posters of me in your room. You could at least let me have this."

Yuuri sighs. When Victor hadn't been able to get one of the posters of Yuuri from the train station, he'd thought that would be that. But somehow he'd gotten ahold of a monstrosity from Yuuri's last Junior season.

"It's only seventeen posters," Yuuri mumbles. "And you can't talk. You're the one who actually enjoyed sleeping in a room with mirrors on every surface."

There's a pause.

"You sound like you're speaking from experience," Victor muses.

"No. No, forget I said that. It was a joke," Yuuri says quickly.

Victor quirks an eyebrow at him. "Where can I find this room?"

"Nowhere. It doesn't exist," Yuuri denies.

Victor smirks at him and manages to push him back down onto the bed and slide off his shirt in one smooth movement.

"My beautiful, beautiful Yuuri," he says. He reaches to untie the knot at the waist of Yuuri's warm-up pants and leans over to kiss him. "You would deny me this?"

"If you want to have sex surrounded by images of yourself, we can go back to my room," Yuuri tells him.

Despite his resolve not to do this in any proximity to his delicate teenage self's poster, he finds himself reaching for the hem of Victor's shirt.

"But Yuuuri," Victor whines. "If I got you into a room with that many mirrors, it wouldn't be me I'd be looking at."

Yuuri feels his cheeks flush.

"Maybe at the NHK Trophy," Yuuri tells him as Victor kisses behind his ear.

"Ah, so it's in Tokyo, then!" Victor pulls back, eyes alight. "We could fly there this weekend!"

"The NHK Trophy isn't always in Tokyo," Yuuri reminds him.

"But it will be this year--Wait, no, Yuuri! How many years are you going to make me wait?" Victor whines.

Yuuri laughs and then hears a dinging from the other side of the room.

"Your phone's going off," he says.

"I don't care." Victor returns to kissing down Yuuri's neck. Yuuri arches into him as two more dings go off in quick succession.

Yuuri ignores them and traces down the hard muscles of Victor's abs to push at the waist of his pants. But then hears his own notification sound from the other side of the room, followed by another from Victor's phone.

He groans.

"We should see what it is," Yuuri says.

"I'm busy," Victor tells him, holding Yuuri's hips still.

"Victor--" Yuuri squirms out from under him and steps half off the bed so he can reach Victor's phone on top of his dresser.

Then he swears.

"What?" Victor asks, concern immediately in his voice as he sits up behind him. "What is it?"

"I thought the triplets were at school," Yuuri mutters darkly, passing his phone to Victor.

Who laughs.

"Shut up."

"'Katsuki Yuuri Tries to Skate Six Quads'," Victor recites. Just as Yuuri hears his own distant, tinny voice say, "Don't take your eyes off me."

"Oh my god, Victor, you're watching it?"

"What else would I do? You're the one who said viral videos were our thing." Victor hauls Yuuri back to lie with him and holds his phone up in front of them.

Yuuri turns his face into Victor's shoulder and squeezes his eyes shut. His cheeks burn at knowing everyone watching that is about to see what a show-off he is.

"Of course, it means we no longer have the element of surprise this season, but it's worth it," Victor is still talking. "Look at that! You practically comboed the toe loop and the salchow."

"Victor."

But Victor's silent for a long moment, and then breathes out, "Jesus, you're amazing."

"I'm really not," Yuuri says without looking up.

"I wish I could see all your programs. I've missed six years of your life, Yuuri!"

"I don't think those years exist anymore," Yuuri mumbles into his shoulder. And doesn't realize until the words leave his mouth that he had started believing that.

 

 

Yuuri had made Victor swear, months ago, that he wouldn't upload any pictures from Hasetsu to Instagram. He hadn't wanted to deal with the hordes of reporters he knew would storm the village if he did that again.

But, it turns out, when the news crews arrive, it's not Victor's fault. It's the angle of 'Katsuki Yuuri Tries to Skate Six Quads', and how the triplets had managed to get the 'Ice Castle Hasetsu' sign in the shot.

Yuuri's parents are thrilled at the extra business. Yuuko is -- apologetically -- thrilled at the publicity it gives the Ice Castle. And Victor claims he is thrilled for the whole world to see how amazing Yuuri is and that Yuuri is his (the triplets' video hadn't cut off immediately after his axel, after all). However, Yuuri suspects he's mostly happy to be back in front of the cameras again. Victor's smile on TV might not always be real, but Yuuri knows he gets a special kind of energy from all the attention.

Yuuri, for one, just wishes his hoodie could give him a better disguise, but he still has to force himself away from the crowd of reporters just to get into the rink.

Victor's already on the ice when he gets there, though he's not skating. He's facing away from Yuuri with one hand on his hip, the other on his chin.

"Victor?" Yuuri calls out as he approaches him.

Victor turns around with an inscrutable expression on his face.

Yuuri ventures, "Are you all right?"

"One of those reporters asked me an interesting question," Victor says.

"Okay?" Yuuri crosses his arms around himself.

"They're wondering what I'm doing here instead of St Petersburg if I'm going to be skating this season."

Yuuri bites his lip.

"And they want to know why I said I'm coaching you when you're not even on the list as a competitor in the Grand Prix."

"This isn't--it's not what it looks like," Yuuri starts, hugging his arms tighter around himself. He'd been planning to say something. He just hadn't realized the list was coming out so early.

"It's not," Victor says flatly.

"No, I--"

"Hey! Idiot!" comes a yell from behind them.

Yuuri whirls around at the familiar voice.

"Yurio?" he asks, stunned. He really shouldn't be surprised, but he just hadn't expected that today--

"You!" Yurio points angrily at them, the movement making his hoodie fall back from his blond hair. Yuuri stares at how much younger he is.

"Does Yakov know you're here?" Victor asks.

"I'm not talking to you, old man," Yurio spits out. "I'm talking to the other idiot."

"What?" Yuuri asks.

"He took a year off to coach you!" Yurio yells. "And, you selfish pig, you didn't even need his help!"

"No, apparently he didn't," Victor says. Yuuri feels his chest tighten.

"Victor--" Yuuri tries. But he's cut off by Yurio.

"You. You are going to teach me the axel."

"I... am?" Yuuri asks. This isn't at all how this went last time. "But why--"

"Because you could do all that and you came in sixth in the Grand Prix Final!" Yurio explodes, throwing his backpack onto the floor. "And you cried in the bathroom!"

"You cried in the bathroom?" Victor repeats.

"Yurio--" Yuuri tries.

"Stop calling me that! Why are you calling me that?"

"I thought you just wanted Victor to choreograph a program for you," Yuuri says, stomach twisting. He hasn't been able to explain anything to Victor and Yurio isn't playing his part right and--

"No, I don't care about that!" Yurio exclaims. Then seems to think the better of it and glares at Victor. "You're still choreographing me a program you promised me, though. Don't try to get out of it."

"Yurio, if you want me to coach you--" Yuuri starts.

"What? Why would you--I don't want my competitor to coach me," Yurio exclaims. "I just want you to teach me the axel!"

"Victor," Yuuri turns to him. Victor's face is drawn. Every time Yuuri has seen this expression, he's thought that he would do anything to never, ever have to again. "Vitya. I promise, I was going to tell you. I just didn't realize the list had come out already. But I--"

"What are you talking about?" Yurio demands.

Yuuri turns back to him and sighs. He says, "I'm not your competitor if I'm retiring."

There's a pause. And then: "What?"

"It seems Katsuki Yuuri is retiring," Victor says. He gives Yurio a brittle, brittle smile. "And, apparently, I'm going to skate another season."


End file.
